A girl-dog with a boy’s name is the tale behind AJ Finn’s new thriller End of Story

His debut was a global smash and major movie, but then AJ Finn went off the radar – until ‘a ten-kilo gremlin with a face like a wet cigar’ became his accidental new co-creator.

This is the story of how a dog became an author.

In 2018, my first novel, The Woman in the Window, was published worldwide, in more than forty languages, and became the fastest-selling debut thriller since Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. I report this with astonishment more than pride; I was lucky, and lucky too to promote the book on tour for a year, kicking off in New York in January 2018 and wrapping up in India twelve months later, my passport tattooed with stamps from nearly twenty countries across five continents. I’d worked in the book industry for a decade, in both my native US and the UK (and I am proud that my own employer pursued and ultimately won the publishing rights for the novel), but never had I much wondered about the rigours of an author tour; mine felt like a proper odyssey, although Odysseus didn’t tote his mother along. (Mine makes for an excellent travel companion.)

‘A constellation of extraordinary actors’ … Amy Adams in The Woman in the Window.

A screen adaptation of The Woman in the Window was filmed that summer on a soundstage in Brooklyn, starring a constellation of extraordinary actors, including three all-time greats, Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, and Gary Oldman. Again: I was lucky.

Around this time, I found myself fielding questions – from my editors, from my literary agents, from well-meaning acquaintances, from not-so-well-meaning acquaintances – about that feared and fabled creature, the Second Book. I had hit upon an idea before The Woman in the Window was released (indeed before the manuscript was submitted to publishers), but even after signing a deal, I continued, happily, in my full-time job for another year and change. Now, I vowed, with my tour winding down, I would begin work.

‘A face like the wet end of a cigar’ … Ike, not AJ. Picture: Brandon Bakus

Instead I acquired another feared and fabled creature: the First Pet. Or my first as an adult, anyway – a French bulldog, the runt of his litter, whom a “puppy nanny” (an off-duty flight attendant roaming the country of a weekend, dispensing canines from her bag like Mary Poppins; what a gig!) brought from the Midwest to New York. There I discovered that my baby boy – Ike, I had decided to call him – was in fact a baby girl. I kept her, of course. I kept the name, too.

Pooch in lap, fingers flexed, I prepared to tickle the keyboard. Instead I tickled Ike’s tummy. Evening after evening, morning after morning, this squat little gargoyle perched on my chest, and … well, I’ll quote a character in End of Story, who, speaking of his dog, recalls staying up ‘past dawn, watching her lift and sink on my chest as though she were floating on water. Watched in awe. With joy. But already I feared for her – she was so vulnerable, in a world so wild with danger, where she could so easily perish.’

I can’t blame the years-and-years delay of End of Story on my dog – there were lots of reasons the date slipped; I struggle pretty mightily with my moods, as I’ve acknowledged in the past, and also this is a more ambitious and sophisticated book, with sharper swerves and deeper depths – but I wasn’t prepared for how my heavy-breathing beast would enrich and improve it.

‘A layered, emotionally intense thriller’ … End of Story by AJ Finn, the pen name of Daniel Mallory.

The novel, which pits a dying crime writer against his inquisitive young biographer as she investigates the disappearance of his wife and son twenty years earlier, is a tale of parents and children, love and loss, regret and revenge. And like The Woman in the Window, it’s a layered, emotionally intense thriller that rewards both suspense fans and readers of literary fiction. (This is my hope, anyway.) Yet while the previous book drew on my own experience, End of Story – with its rangier cast, its trickier narrative – required more imagination: I have neither children nor spouse, for example, and unlike the central characters here, I’m quite introverted. The plot of End of Story takes big swings, but early on, the book read like a thriller, without much heart; the characters resisted me. Until Ike unlocked them.

A novelist faces certain eventualities with a book: softening sales (inevitable and inarguable), some degree of online abuse (best to ignore, no matter how vile), reduced presence on store shelves … Unexpected, however, is the divine intercession of a ten-kilo gremlin with a face like ‘the wet end of a cigar’ (© random Manhattan passer-by).

‘I hope it was worth the wait’ … AJ’s (and Ike’s) new novel is out now. Picture: Brandon Bakus

As Ike and I fitted ourselves to each other – it was more me fitting to her, really – End of Story deepened and darkened; after she was diagnosed at age two with a vertebral disease and began attending hydrotherapy class twice weekly, trudging dutifully along an underwater treadmill (it works!), the novel developed pathos and power; each day I spent knocking a tennis ball from her paws further humanised the novel. That this thriller reads, per Publishers Weekly, ‘like Knives Out but cuts deeper,’ is a tribute to my co-author. End of Story took a while, but with characters as sympathetic as these, I hope it was worth the wait.

End of Story by A.J. Finn is available now, published by HarperCollins.

Our Book Of The Month is What Happened To Nina? by Dervla McTiernan. You can get it at Booktopia for 43 per cent off the RRP.

And tell us about your fave books – and furry reading companions – at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook, where (fun fact) AJ was one of the first authors to feature back in 2018.

Originally published as A girl-dog with a boy’s name is the tale behind AJ Finn’s new thriller End of Story