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Overall Summary
A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window is a 2017 psychological mystery novel set in Harlem that tells the story of hermetic psychologist Anna Fox who struggles with the possibility that she is going insane after witnessing a murder that seems, by all other accounts, impossible. As Anna tries desperately to unravel the murder mystery, no one takes her seriously—causing her to question whether her own mind is unraveling.
Anna is a psychologist who has an agoraphobia and addiction problem. She lives in a house in Harlem that she shares with her husband, Ed, and their daughter, Olivia. Anna’s next-door neighbor, Jane, moves into the house with her teenage son Ethan. The two of them become friends because they’re kind to each other; however, Anna doesn’t like going outside so she can’t meet people on her own terms.
One day, Anna sees something shocking through her neighbor’s window. She calls the police and tells them that she saw Jane being murdered. They find out later that Jane is alive, but they don’t believe Anna because they think she’s crazy. She insists that the woman who lives in the house isn’t really Jane Russell, and continues to investigate on her own. By talking with a couple of detectives, we learn more about Anna’s past: Her husband and daughter are dead, not separated from her like she thought.
A year earlier, Anna and Ed took their daughter Olivia to Vermont. They had a fight about an affair that Anna was having with another man. The argument ended the vacation early, after which they returned to New York City. Anna drove the family home through a snowstorm while suffering from survivor’s guilt and trauma because of her car accident. She retreated into her Harlem home where she has been living since then, medicating herself with alcohol and pills for depression
Alistair seems to be a threat to Anna as she pursues the mystery. Alistair claims that Anna is crazy and that Jane Russell never existed. She finds a photo of the real Jane and shows it to Ethan, demanding him to tell her the truth about what’s happening in their house. He admits that he was adopted by his parents because his mother was drug-addicted and abused him when he was young. Since getting clean, she had been stalking them trying to get back her son. To keep him safe, they killed her and buried her body somewhere upstate New York so no one would find out about it since Anna saw everything happen when Katherine returned home from rehab for drugs after being away for years with no contact with anyone else except Alistair who paid all of her bills while she stayed at an expensive rehab center in Arizona where Katherine met Alistair during one of his business trips there (Alistair said something like “I’ve known you were going through hell but I didn’t know how bad until now” or something like that). The couple is now wary of Anna because she witnessed Katherine’s return home from rehab for drug addiction after being away for years without any contact with anyone else except Alistair who paid all of her bills while staying at an expensive rehab center in Arizona where both met each other during one of his business trips there (Alister told me something like “I knew you were going through hell but I didn’t know how bad until now”).
Anna soon learns that Ethan has been sneaking into her house at night with a stolen key. She also finds out that he posed as an elderly woman online to learn more about Anna’s background and the fate of her family. These clues lead Anna to discover that Ethan killed Katherine, not his parents, since he had a personality disorder. He confesses this fact and says that he plans on killing Anna next. At the novel’s dramatic climax, Ethan tries to kill Anna but she stops him by throwing him through a roof skylight. With Ethan dead, Alistair goes to jail for assisting in Katherine’s murder because it was proven that he helped hide evidence from the police so they wouldn’t suspect anyone else besides his parents’ involvement in Katherine’s death. With Alistair gone, Anna is now more optimistic about her future and doesn’t have any bad memories anymore due to having everyone who caused them dead or in prison (except herself).
