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| Media & Entertainment
February 8 2019

Author lied about brain cancer to bolster career

Bestselling author Daniel Mallory admitted in an interview with the New Yorker that he lied about having brain cancer to help him kick-start his career.

Mallory said that the fabrication was sought to mask his embarrassment towards his past struggle with bipolar disorder.

He told the Mail: “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.  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."

The author of The Woman in the Window shot to fame last year when it was revealed that he was he face behind the pseudonym A.J. Finn.  Before his rise to stardom, it was found that he had deceived many peers in the publishing industry with a wave of lies to bolster his chances of getting ahead. And it seems that lying about his health wasn’t the only thing that he falsified.

The serial liar pretended to be British when he is in actual fact American.  The Mail reported that when applying for a role at a London publishing house, Mallory claimed to have worked as an Editor at Ballantine when he actually worked there as an Assistant.

Additionally, Mallory claimed to be a ‘double-doctor’ – having earned a Ph.D from Oxford and American University which was also false