For many Americans, the greatest reason to cheer during the sleepy, low-scoring game that was Super Bowl LIII was not the Patriots’ victory. In certain circles, it was the highly anticipated, multimillion-dollar commercial produced by the Washington Post, featuring the voice of Tom Hanks and heroic footage of journalists from various outlets that proclaimed, over a soaring score, these simple truths: “Knowing empowers us, knowing helps us decide, knowing keeps us free.”

It was a good ad, inspiring even. Who doesn’t love Tom Hanks? But you could find The Washington Post commercial uplifting and also saddening, insofar as it was deemed necessary.

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Dan Mallory, a book editor turned novelist, is tall, good-looking, and clever. His novel, “The Woman in the Window,” which was published under a lightly worn pseudonym, A. J. Finn, was the hit psychological thriller of the past year. Like “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn (2012), and “The Girl on the Train,” by Paula Hawkins (2015), each of which has sold millions of copies, Mallory’s novel, published in January, 2018, features an unreliable first-person female narrator, an apparent murder, and a possible psychopath.

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