“It is the EXACT same plot like down to the main characters’ back story,” one person wrote in an Amazon review comparing the two books. The stories have nearly identical plot twists in the final act. Both novels feature anxiety-ridden, middle-aged female narrators who are afraid to leave their homes, and they witness something suspicious while spying on neighbors. The parallels are numerous, and detailed. “The Woman in the Window” is also strikingly similar to a novel by Sarah A. Mallory - who was recently the subject of an exposé in The New Yorker that detailed his past as a habitual liar who feigned fatal illnesses and fabricated a tragic family history - has acknowledged that the plot of his novel, which became a best seller, owes a debt to several famous works, including Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” and Paula Hawkins’s blockbuster thriller, “The Girl on the Train.” In retrospect, his choice of words was surprisingly honest, a rare acknowledgment in a medium that prizes originality of how deeply he was influenced by other popular thrillers. Last year, while promoting his debut thriller, “The Woman in the Window,” Dan Mallory praised the tradition of literary mimicry: “It is often said that ‘good writers borrow, great writers steal,’” he said in an interview with The Guardian, borrowing a phrase from T.S.
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