SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Take a touch of Hitchcock and of "Gone Girl." Add a mysterious author and rumors of a huge price tag, and you come up with that rare bird, a debut novel that hit No. 1 on The New York Times' best-seller list in its first week on the market. It's called "The Woman In The Window." NPR's Lynn Neary has the story.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Brand-name authors like James Patterson or Stephen King hit the top of The New York Times' best-seller list in the first week all the time. Unknowns - not so often.
GREG COWLES: It is very unusual.
NEARY: Greg Cowles is the longtime writer of the "Inside The List" column at the Times. He says the buzz around "The Woman In The Window" has been building since a hotly contested auction for the novel by an unknown author named A. J. Finn. Turns out, that's a pseudonym for Daniel Mallory, an executive editor at William Morrow, the publishing company that bought the book. But Cowles says, even with all that interest, no book is a sure bet.
COWLES: You really never know. Despite the buzz, despite the huge advance sales, the publishers themselves never know - will this book hit? You can't manufacture a best-seller.
NEARY: Daniel Mallory, aka A. J. Finn, probably would know how to manufacture one. He has spent a lifetime reading, studying and editing mysteries and thrillers. And when "Gone Girl" sparked a trend in psychological thrillers with an unreliable female narrator, he was tempted to jump on the bandwagon.
DANIEL MALLORY: When Gillian Flynn published "Gone Girl," I thought, aha - this is the sort of book I've loved and could possibly try to write. The trouble was, I didn't have a story.
NEARY: Mallory didn't want to put a mystery together like a jigsaw puzzle. He wanted the book to have substance. He was also suffering from depression, which he later discovered was misdiagnosed.
MALLORY: For days or weeks or even months at a stretch during the 15 years in which I struggled with misdiagnosed bipolar disorder, there were times when I could not prize myself from bed, let alone leave the house.
NEARY: While adjusting to new medication, Mallory took some time off from work. He watched a lot of old movies - his other great passion. And one day, as Hitchcock's "Rear Window" played in the background, he looked out his own window and noticed his neighbor across the street.
MALLORY: In accordance with fine Manhattan tradition, I watch her for a couple moments. She is settling herself in an armchair, aiming a remote at her TV. And behind me on screen, Thelma Ritter is chiding Jimmy Stewart for peering across the courtyard into Raymond Burr's apartment.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "REAR WINDOW")
THELMA RITTER: (As Stella) I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg, then you get to looking out the window, see things you shouldn't see - trouble.
MALLORY: And I thought to myself, how funny that in 1954 Jimmy Stewart is spying on his neighbors, and I'm doing the exact same thing 60 years later. And just like that, an idea for a story presented itself. And striding towards that story from another corner of my brain was this character who had struggled, as I had struggled, with mental health issues and whose grief seemed comparable to mine in intensity, although the circumstances were very different from my own.
NEARY: That character is Anna Fox. She suffers from agoraphobia - gets panicked if she even feels the air outside her front door.
MALLORY: She was once a respected child psychologist, but she has withdrawn from her profession and, indeed, from the world in the wake of some sort of trauma. And we don't learn the details of that trauma until about two thirds of the way through the book. She does try to occupy herself as best she can. She learns French, she counsels fellow agoraphobes through a digital forum, and she watches old films. They form a sort of soundtrack to her life.
NEARY: She also drinks a lot of red wine, which she mixes recklessly with her meds. And she spends a great deal of time spying on her neighbors with a long lens camera. One day, when her mind is especially foggy, she's watching "Dark Passage" as Humphrey Bogart is going under anesthesia.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DARK PASSAGE")
HOUSELEY STEVENSON: (As Dr. Walter Coley) I'm going to give you some shots that'll freeze your face. Now, just close your eyes. Got a fine aesthetic - used it in the last war. It's in your bloodstream now.
NEARY: As the film plays, Anna looks in her neighbor's window and thinks she sees a murder.
STEVENSON: (As Dr. Walter Coley) It'll be all right. It'll be all right.
NEARY: The victim is a woman who has befriended Anna. But no one believes Anna ever met her, much less saw her get stabbed to death. The murder is only one of the mysteries that will keep readers guessing. Mallory takes his time revealing why Anna is so traumatized that she cannot leave her house.
MALLORY: What I can say about this particular dimension of the book is that I consider it the heart of the story. And whether you anticipate its details or parameters or not is sort of by the by. It's really incidental. It's not about surprise. It's not about a jack-in-the-box effect. It's about how such an event would impact someone, how they would cope with it and how they would struggle to move past it.
NEARY: In the tradition of many mysteries, Mallory set his story in a confined space. His next book, which he's already working on, is set in a big city - San Francisco - and he says it feels great to get a breath of fresh air.
Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.