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Monday 19 August 2019

Lodger Review (David Lapham, Maria Lapham)


A serial-killing travel blogger rents a room in some kid’s family’s house, destroys the family and, years later, the kid grows up looking for revenge on the blogger killer. 

David and Maria Lapham’s Lodger is basically Stray Bullets if Stray Bullets was crap! Lodger is a similar kind of dark crime story but not nearly as compelling as the material in Stray Bullets. 

Waiting for Ricky to inevitably catch up to Lodger is tedious and what both do in the meanwhile for the most part isn’t interesting. Lodger kills more random people while Ricky’s on the road the whole time - her holding up the restaurant was the one scene where I was into it. 

Lodger himself is such a flat character with no motivation for anything he’s doing. He’s a psychotic serial killer ‘cos the plot needs him to be! He’s also a famous travel blogger because Ricky needs a way to track him around ‘murica - through the blog. But the contrivances don’t stop there - his disguises are apparently so good that even loved ones are fooled despite them being weirdly made out of papier mache?! Give me a break! 

Ricky herself is just Beth from Stray Bullets and the book ends predictably with a reveal that only underlined how little I cared about anyone in the story. 

The restaurant robbery was the single highlight for me though it’s a well-told story on a technical level - David Lapham is a master cartoonist if nothing else. Unfortunately Lodger is nowhere near as good as Lapham’s Stray Bullets series - I highly recommend that over this forgettable rubbish. 

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