Handsome and accomplished, Dan Mallory seemed to be the new golden boy of American letters. He had a glittering CV, worked for prestige publishers in London and New York and wrote a psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window, that was a huge bestseller and adapted into a Netflix film.
He also burnished his public persona with falsehoods. Among the most egregious was that his mother – still alive – had died of cancer, his brother – still alive – had killed himself and that Mallory himself – still lying – had a brain tumour. He added a fake doctorate from Oxford University for good measure.
It is a juicy yarn that first made headlines in 2019 and was often compared to Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr Ripley. It is also worth a second look and a natural subject for Missing Pages, a new podcast series that sets about “reopening literary cold cases” and looking back at “some of the most iconic, jaw-dropping and just truly bizarre book scandals to shape the publishing world”.
The podcast is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, who has reviewed books for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe newspapers as well as National Public Radio (NPR). Her Twitter account, @TheBookMaven, has more than 200,000 followers. But she does not claim to be either a publishing insider or an investigative journalist.
