Been a while since I've had the pleasure or opportunity to read any of David's books but I jumped at the chance to try out this standalone thriller and boy was I glad I did!

Thomas Brogan is trapped and has nowhere to go and nowhere to run - apart from the forgotten loft spaces in an ordinary row of houses, inhabited by seemingly ordinary people. Nothing exciting I hear you say? At first you'd think this is a stop gap to escape capture but with each hour brings new discoveries - for Brogan and the reader. Turn each page and discover a new relationship, a new character and dark secrets just begging to come out.

I loved the book, incredibly easy to read and I devoured it in just a few days. Brogan is one of those characters you aren't supposed to feel empathy for but somehow you start falling for the protagonist - in a weird sort of way! I think it's his mind that fascinated me more than anything and the conversations. Oh those conversations!

This was so creepy & so good! It's dark & scary & addictive. I liked the way the book was written, and the interactions Thomas had with his unwitting housemates. The characters were great, and I loved the ending!

This was unlike most thriller books that I read. It was darkly comical and I loved that. The plot wavered a little at times and I found some parts repetitive but overall a great read with Dexter vibes.

This is the first David Jackson book I have read and it certainly won't be the last ... The Resident is a deliciously eerie and unnerving read which I thoroughly enjoyed however I did have to send my husband up to the attic to make sure there were no gaps between us and the next door neighbours as I live in a terrace!!!

This is a totally engrossing psychological thriller told from the perspective of the main protagonist Brogan and what an excellent character he is ... a perfect bad guy but with a vulnerable side to him that almost makes you feel sorry for him ... I say almost because he is one sick and deranged individual who enjoys playing with his victims before inflicting pain and suffering.

There is plenty of dark humour to lighten this dark book and with a simple and straight forward plot written at a good pace, this is a great read that I have no hesitation to recommend to readers out there who enjoy a book that takes the mundane of daily life and turns it into something sinister.

Thank you Serpents Tail / Profile Books / Viper Books via NetGalley for my advance copy in return for an unbiased and unedited review.

The Resident by David Jackson.. what can I say? This book is brilliant! It is nothing like previous books of his but that is ok. I was expecting a far scarier and dark read. Don’t get me wrong, it is dark and scary but it is also funny and addictive. I read this book in one night, staying up late to finish it.

The main character of this book is Thomas Brogan. He is an evil and sadistic serial killer... and you can’t help but like him. He is on the run from police, after a brutal murder. He breaks into an abandoned house and discovers a shared attic space across 4 homes, the perfect hideaway for a fugitive. He watches his new housemates and sneaks in when they are not there for food and showers. He likes to mess with their minds and play games with them. They don’t even know that he is there and it is creepy! Imagine this happening to you. I have to admit the noises in the night while I was reading this did make me jump!

This is a fun but creepy read and I cannot recommend it enough. Thanks so much to Viper and Netgalley for my advanced copy of this book to read.

What was that creaking noise? Sounds like someone's in the attic! I'm sure all of us have had that thought at some point but we tell ourselves that it's just the house settling. But what if a stranger, no, a serial killer really was hiding out in your house... Meet Thomas Brogan. He's on the run from the police, wanted for the vicious murder of a married couple so he hides out in an empty house which turns out to have a loft space shared with multiple residents of the street.

Not content with just laying low, Brogan is spying on the neighbours, studying their lives, messing with their heads and inevitably planning his next victims. The whole concept is creepy and whole lot of fun as you just never know what will happen next - Will he kill someone? Will he be discovered?

I love the fact that we get an insight into the tough childhood that led Brogan to kill but even that isn't my favourite thing about the book! Reading this is almost seems as if there are two people up in the attic. This is because Brogan has a split personality that is in constant conversation, guiding his decisions. This internals battle of wills is both fascinating and often very amusing. The grounded sensible Brogan seems to be dominant but his darker side has a thirst for killing and it's a constant battle to keep this part of him in check.

Brilliant psychological thriller, couldn't put it down.

Thanks to @netgalley and @viper.books for providing a #gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. The Resident is released on the 16th of July 2020.

Oooo this book made me feel so comfortable...which is good!

I've never read a book from the perspective of a serial killer and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Said serial killer is on the run when he finds a derelict and boarded up end terrace house to hide out in when he discovers that he can access the attic space of the three adjoining houses (and therefore can potentially access the houses themselves). And so the games begin...

I wasn't sure about the "second voice" in the serial killer's head but I actually felt this provided the book with some light relief which I thought helped me understand what the killer was thinking and feeling. A very clever way of giving the reader an insight into his thoughts (which are sometimes quite disturbing!)

I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes to feel slightly on edge and likes a bit of dark humour.

This was so good. Five minutes in I was checking the locks and scouring the ceiling for peep holes. Thank God I don't have an attic. The story kicked off immediately, no messing about. I was hooked but in the end I was screaming at my kindle. It was exactly disappointing, it just wasn't the ending I wanted.

Thomas Brogan is a deranged serial killer who, whilst on the run, takes up residence in an abandoned townhouse. Unbeknownst to the other tenants, Brogan can access the other homes through their attic spaces. Creepy AF. He immediately beings getting to know his new neighbours by becoming a demented Big Brother, listening to their conversations and occasionally dropping in for a bite to eat. I was completely unsettled throughout this book. It's amazing how easy it is to move things around the house or eat the food and the home owners simply chalk this up to coincidence. Just blame it on your husband, it makes perfect sense.

With one man playing hide and seek for 300 pages I thought this would get boring fast. Happily, there was more than enough to keep the story line interesting. In fact, I couldn't get enough of Brogan and his constant search for food. I wasn't even bothered by the distinct lack of murder. His 'roommate' doesn't count.

The ending was infuriating. Maybe I'm a psycho but I was rooting for more death. The only consolation is the fact I definitely didn't see it coming. I had several possible endings circling my brain but not this one. I'm always happy to be surprised. I look forward to more from David Jackson.

**I received a free review copy from Serpent's Tail via Netgalley in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.

I thought the premise sounded really good and I enjoyed how this was written with Brogan's inner dialogue and switching back and forth. I found it quite dark,twisty and sinister and found myself actually hoping for a good outcome for the bad guy at points. My only negative point would be that I found it was quite a slow build up and then the ending felt rushed. Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for my eARC in return for my honest review.

I thought the premise sounded really good and I enjoyed how this was written with Brogan's inner dialogue and switching back and forth.
I found it quite dark,twisty and sinister and found myself actually hoping for a good outcome for the bad guy at points.
My only negative point would be that I found it was quite a slow build up and then the ending felt rushed.
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for my eARC in return for my honest review.

This one of the best suspense books I have read in ages. It was quite frightening and I literally could not put it down. Lots of twists and turns in the story to keep you guessing. Would love to read more from this author.

I love the premise of this one, but found the story difficult to get into. Perhaps it was the internal dialogue with himself, that did it. There were some entertaining scenes (Ralph for example!) but they didn't build into a gripping story for me. Brogan didn't feel real.

David Jackson’s The Resident cleverly plays upon some of our worse fears.

Thomas Brogan is a serial killer on the run. The police stumbled on his latest bloody scene while he was there and now he is running. In desperation he breaks into an abandoned house at the end of a terrace on a quiet English street. He climbs into the loft to hide and realises that the four houses in the terrace are linked by the shared attic space. Initially Brogan is glad of a place to lie low, but gradually he comes to realise that he can spy on the residents of the other houses and even drop down into their homes. It is not long before the voices in his head are convincing him to play games with the other residents, especially the young couple at the end of the terrace.

Jackson takes a little while to set the various elements of his story in place, but once underway The Resident is gripping tale with some very dark moments. Unexpected developments keep the story moving along at a good pace and Brogan’s internal dialogues provide insights into his childhood and the factors that influenced his descent into killing. Everything is seen through Brogan’s eyes and some of his observations have a darkly humorous touch to them. There are also surprising flashes of poignancy and reflection, especially in Brogan’s relationship with one of the occupants.

The violence in the book is not overly graphic, although there are realistically gruesome moments towards the end. The tension mounts considerably over the last few chapters and the ending delivers some good surprises. Some suspension of disbelief is needed, but not enough to detract from the enjoyment of the story.

In all, it is a good chilling read that will make you think twice next time you hear something go bump in the night.

Four stars out of five.

Thanks to NetGalley and Viper for an electronic copy of the book to review.

I’m certainly in the minority when it comes to this book, I just didn’t think it was that great. I think maybe with all the hype I had expected something amazing and it just wasn’t that for me. The premise is amazing, it just fell really short. It was so slow at times, at 71% I was literally just finishing it for the sake of it; I did not want to hear another description of what Brogan ate. This was a solid 2 stars throughout, I settled on 2.5 purely for the last few pages which actually were gripping to read. I’ve rounded this up to 3 for my review but I do feel this is generous on this occasion. Obviously a lot of people have really loved ‘The Resident’ but unfortunately I was not one of them.

Thank you Netgalley & Profile Books.

This is a compelling tale of Thomas Brogan, a self-described “serial killer” who is, technically speaking, more of a spree killer. Despite the somewhat nightmarish content, it is strangely easy to read, which is a bit disturbing in itself.

The main plot device is a row of terraced houses with interconnecting loft spaces, and this works very well and is quite plausible, because I can remember a junior school classmate who exploited just such a situation to commit his own little crime spree: in that case, the long row of 1960s terraced houses had a communal loft space which gave access to the tops of stud walls all the way along. My classmate exploited this situation to steal all sorts of things from all sorts of places, and hide them by tying bits of string to each valuable item and hanging them down inside the stud walls, where even police searches of the loft failed to find them. The masterplan was ruined, however, when one of the stolen items proved to be an alarm clock, which my classmate neglected to disarm before lowering it into its hiding place.

These communal loft spaces predictably turned out to be a lethal fire risk, however, especially in more modern terraces with stud walls as described above, and local councils made efforts to get them all fire-walled in the seventies and eighties. So it is also quite plausible that such a loft-space would be partitioned in the course of the story. I am not sure if any still exist in England, in fact: they may do, but they shouldn’t, for reasons that have nothing to do with serial killers.

The story is narrated largely by Brogan arguing with a voice in his own head, which lays the back story out nicely.

However, the one fault with this novel is that the author allows himself to fall into the trap of thinking that the back story of a serial killer has to include a real-life horror scene of some kind, for them to want to inflict similar horrors on others. This isn’t necessarily true. Often, the actual triggers are so banal that investigators think they must have missed something more significant. The biggest risk is not a horror scene in early childhood: young children undoubtedly suffer from such experiences, but without being turned into monsters. What creates the monsters is instability at home affecting male children between nine and eleven years old, or children in that age range being subjected to unremedied bullying in any setting. The lack of remedy or resolution matters, and the absence of a stable, preferably loving, relationship with a male parent or authority figure. This is not meant to be an attack on single Mums, it is an observation that absent or abusive fathers or carers can create threats to society as a whole. The author gets this bit pretty much right, but only after he’s put in the seemingly obligatory nightmare scene in early childhood, which confuses the issue.

There is a good surprise ending to the book.

Oh my - I absolutely loved this book. I have read all David Jackson's previous books and enjoyed them all - but this was completely different and absolutely brilliant - I read it in a couple of days and relished every minute. I would recommend all of David Jackson's books and this one, as a standalone, is fantastic. Highly recommended.

I have been reading and reviewing David Jackson’s books for some years now, and something I have always admired is the versatility he shows as an author. Already the author of two terrific detective crime series, one set in New York and one in Liverpool, which are well worth seeking out, The Resident is a standalone, and a pretty damn chilling one at that…

What particularly struck me about this book is how much it uses the ordinary to heighten the intensity of the extraordinary. The action takes place in an ordinary street, inhabited by ordinary people with ordinary lives and problems, and most importantly, ordinary loft spaces. And then Jackson totally brings it. I dread to think how this idea came to fruition, of a wanted serial killer skulking amongst the outgrown baby clothes, Christmas trees and sundry knick- knacks above our heads, but by putting such a loathsome individual in this ordinary setting works exceptionally well. As Brogan traverses the loft space looking for the next victims to sate his twisted appetite, Jackson keeps a smart control of the tension and pace of his plot.

What was particularly interesting is the way that the author shows how Brogan insinuates himself into the lives of the inhabitants below, either up close and personal, or at a distance feeding on their sadness or insecurities, but slowly beginning to reveal to us that these are not exceptionally ordinary people at all as some dark secrets come to light. There is also a clever use of Brogan’s own interior monologue too, which also opens up his character and a growing sense of him forming attachments and beginning to self-question his motivations and previous actions. Although, I had a little suspension of disbelief at the ending of The Resident, with hindsight it was a nice reminder of the fact that you should never underestimate the most ordinary of people… Highly recommended.

A BRILLIANT creepy read that had me hooked from the first to the last page. I will never think the same about the noises a house makes in the dead of night. Infact I am sleeping with the lights on. A serial killer that loves his work and loves to play games. What a read it gave me goosebumps on my goosebumps. The Resident is a fantastic must five star read and I can't wait to read more of this authors work.
Thanks to Serpent Tail/Profile Books and Netgalley for the ARC.

Thomas Brogan is a serial killer on the run, and he is living in your attic.

If that doesn’t pull you in, I have no idea what will.

This is my first David Jackson book and I am now so excited to read more.

The couples affected by the serial killer in the attic are so great to read, dealing with all the emotions that you can imagine thinking things are happening but with no proof.

I genuinely had no idea where this was going and I was not disappointed!

A must read

I am a big fan of David Jackson, so was really looking forward to reading this book. It certainly didn't disappoint! Thomas Brogan is a serial killer on the run. When he holes up in an empty house at the end of a terrace, he discovers that he can access the other houses in the terrace via the loft space. This is when he decides to start having some fun with the other residents, going in to their houses when they're out, using the shower and eating the food. But Thomas has killing on his mind. Which of the residents will be his next victim, and what sick games will he play before killing? This is a tense thriller which will keep you on the edge of your seat to the end. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
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