The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, Fiction, Mystery & Detective

The Lodger was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's first thriller, and a remarkable film it is. But the story Hitchcock tells -- of young love and mistaken identity (and is that a mistake, or malicious accusation by a rival. . . ?) -- is very different from Lowndes's tale, a story of an elderly couple with a strange and unsettling tenant -- a man with peculiar habits who may be the Ripper himself. . . .