Dan Mallory, the author of the best-selling novel The Woman in the Window under the pen name AJ Finn, has admitted he lied about having brain cancer.
The admission comes after he was the subject of an in-depth New Yorker profile by Ian Parker which accused him of a long history of fabricating stories about his health, personal life and academic achievements.
The article alleged that Mallory repeatedly said he was suffering from brain cancer, including in a university application and to colleagues while working at publishing houses in London and New York. The New Yorker article also alleged that Mallory said his mother had died of cancer and that his brother had died in tragic circumstances. Although his mother had cancer when Mallory was in his teens, both she and his brother are alive.
Mallory has now released a statement confirming that he lied about having brain cancer, as a way to disguise his struggles with bipolar disorder.
In response to the New Yorker piece, he wrote: "It is the case that on numerous occasions in the past, I have stated, implied, or allowed others to believe that I was afflicted with a physical malady instead of a psychological one: cancer, specifically.
"My mother battled aggressive breast cancer starting when I was a teenager; it was the formative experience of my adolescent life, synonymous with pain and panic. I felt intensely ashamed of my psychological struggles - they were my scariest, most sensitive secret.
"And for 15 years, even as I worked with psychotherapists, I was utterly terrified of what people would think of me if they knew - that they'd conclude I was defective in a way that I should be able to correct, or, worse still, that they wouldn't believe me. Dissembling seemed the easier path."
He added that "like many afflicted with severe bipolar II disorder, I experienced crushing depressions, delusional thoughts, morbid obsessions, and memory problems.
"It's been horrific, not least because, in my distress, I did or said or believed things I would never ordinarily say, or do, or believe - things of which, in many instances, I have absolutely no recollection.
"With the benefit of hindsight, I'm sorry to have taken, or be seen to have taken, advantage of anyone else's goodwill, however desperate the circumstances; that was never the goal."
Mallory was a book editor before he released the 2018 best-selling psychological thriller The Woman in the Window under the pseudonym AJ Finn.
It went straight to number one in the New York Times best-seller list and has been made into a film starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman that is due to be released later this year.
