Lodger

This is a beautifully wrought novel of psychological suspense that should have a place on any mystery buff's shelf of classics. - Chicago Sun-TimesInspired by the notorious Whitechapel murders, 'The Lodger' by Marie Belloc Lowndes is a 1913 thriller that first appeared when Jack the Ripper's brutal crimes were well within living memory. Time has done nothing to diminish the popular fascination with serial killings. This gripping tale of an elderly English couple's growing suspicions of their sinister border has served as the basis for several movies, including one of Alfred Hitchcock's first films. An early example of a psychological suspense story and a brilliant evocation of the fog-bound and gaslit streets of late Victorian London, it is still a wonderfully compelling thriller.Absence does make the heart grow fonder-at first, at any rate. Mrs. Bunting was well aware of that. During the long course of hers and Bunting's mild courting, they'd been separated for about three months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for her. She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn't do without him, and she had felt-oddest fact of all-acutely, miserably jealous.- Marie Belloc Lowndes (The Lodger)