The Lodger (original 1912; edition 2010)

An Edwardian Thriller. The Buntings, a married couple retired from service, are down on their luck. While trying to preserve their "respectability" they have sold or pawned many of their clothes and furnishings. Just in the nick of time an eccentric gentleman chooses to rent 2 rooms from them at a generous rate. At about the same time a series of gruesome murders start happening, all the work of "The Avenger" (Jack the Ripper). The story continues as Mr and Mrs Bunting begin to suspect just who they might have let in their house as a lodger.
The story is well written, and atmospheric. Belloc Lowndes, the sister of Hillaire Belloc, is able to keep the suspense building until the very end. This story was recommended to Ernest Hemingway by Gertrude Stein, as he recounts in A Moveable Feast. I greatly enjoyed it. ( )

I vaguely recall a movie based on this novel, but didn’t remember much of it at all. Basically it’s a riff on Jack the Ripper - what if he was your lodger? A couple living on their last shillings receive a reprieve from starvation and poverty when a gentleman lets the rooms on their upper floors. He has little baggage, strange hours, and most important of all, ready money. The pounds he pays for his room and board put them back on the road to financial security and all seems right in the world. Except the coincidence of his late-night excursions and reports of killings in the paper. At first the wife suspects that he may be the killer and tiptoes around him and her family, hoping that no one else notices what she has. How can they though? Friend and policeman Joe Chandler has never laid eyes on the man since his are reserved for Daisy alone. Bunting hardly interacts with the lodger at all and Mrs. Bunting has all the duties of caring for him sewn up. Until the night Bunting accidentally meets the lodger in the night fog of the neighborhood. Did he really have blood on his sleeve? Did he really throw away his rubber-soled boots after a footprint was printed in the paper? Did he really utter threats against the Buntings and the police? Is he the Avenger? It’s not as tense or gory as it sounds, but is pretty entertaining.

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Excellent, understated, psychological thriller. A middle aged couple is looking for lodgers to fill their rented accommodation, which they are finding difficult to maintain. They used to be servants for upper class families and are used to live in expensive houses and to take care of the wishes of their masters. They have used up all their savigns and are at an stage in which they are beginning to be hungry. Then, a peculiar gentleman decides to become their lodger and make their financial situation stable. His arrival coincides with the appearance, in the streets of London, of a serial killer who escapes detection. A young friend of the couple, a policeman, keeps the couple informed of the developments of the investigation and makes the landlady suspect that the lodger might not be the trustworthy gentleman that he appears to be. This is an excellent novel that keeps the reader wondering until the end. The characters are well drawn and the setting is quite atmospheric. ( )

Anyone who has seen the old silent movie of "The Lodger" directed by Hitchcock will recognise the plot of this book. Young mysterious lodger boarding at home of elderly couple, "is he or isn't he the serial killer" (based on Jack the Ripper and set in Victorian London). Definitely worth a read, the novel focuses on the elderly couple and how much people are prepared to ignore dangerous clues when they have a rich lodger and need the money! ( )

An intersting psychological twist on Jack the Ripper and his affect on two people who believe they are housing the serial killer known in the book as "The Avenger." The wife builds herself up into a mental frenzy almost from the beginning and the husband, slowly but with much more certainly towards the end of the book. Despite their strong suspicions and ongoing muders neither one reveals their fears to each other or anyone else. At the conclusion the wife and the lodger have an incident where he provides definite proof to her fears. I enjoyed it throughout and truly liked the dialogue the author brought of the mix of londoners during that time.