Audiobook · read by volunteers
Lodger
Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947)
Read by Lee Ann Howlett · 27 chapters · 7 h 42
About the book
London is in the grip of fear. A murderer known only as the Avenger is killing young blonde women, and the whole city is searching for him. In a modest house, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting, who are struggling to make ends meet, welcome a strange, quiet lodger who pays well and keeps odd hours. Their daughter Daisy, a pretty young woman, becomes friendly with him. As the days pass, the landlady begins to wonder about her guest, and her suspicions and her need for money pull her in two directions. Marie Belloc Lowndes builds her suspense through small details and through the thoughts of an ordinary woman rather than through detection. One LibriVox volunteer reads the 27 chapters of this classic thriller in a little under eight hours. It is an early classic of psychological suspense.
Introduction
Marie Belloc Lowndes, who lived from 1868 to 1947, was an English novelist, the sister of the writer Hilaire Belloc. She wrote many novels, but The Lodger, published in 1913, remains her best-known. It started as a short story in 1911 and was then expanded into a full-length novel. The book was inspired by the real case of Jack the Ripper, the unidentified killer who terrorised the east of London in 1888, and it has been regarded as a pioneering example of the psychological suspense story.
The novel is told largely from the point of view of the Buntings, a couple who were once servants and have fallen on hard times. They have been reduced to letting rooms, and the arrival of a lodger offers a way to escape from poverty. Through this domestic setting Lowndes explores a moral dilemma: what should one do if one suspects a paying guest of terrible crimes? The tension grows from the couple’s uncertainty, rather than from action.
The Lodger has been adapted many times. Alfred Hitchcock directed a silent film in 1927, and it was one of his first great successes. Later adaptations in film, opera and television show the continuing appeal of the story.
The recording has 27 chapters, runs for nearly eight hours, and is read by a single LibriVox volunteer. It is a good choice for listeners who enjoy a slow-burning, atmospheric mystery set in Edwardian London, and who like to be unsettled gradually. The pleasure of the book lies in its slow, anxious pace, and the narration lets the tension rise without any need for dramatic effects.
Public domain
Marie Belloc Lowndes died in 1947: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text