Read: 12/29/2020 – 1/10/2021
You might love this book if you’re looking for: Tense thrillers, cinematic writing, mystery/crime stories, books with film adaptations, and old-school horror.
You might not love this book if you’re looking for: A character-driven story, flowery settings and descriptions, or a lengthy, slow-burn horror novel.
Psycho by Robert Bloch is a short horror novel that tells the story of Norman Bates, his mother, and the hotel they own together. On yet another quiet night (business had slowed abysmally since the highway moved) Mary Crane checks in for the night.
Mary has just stolen a significant amount of money from her employer and, on the run, decided that the quiet, desolate motel was perfect. After an awkward dinner with Norman, where his mother shouted vulgarities from another part of the house, Mary retires to her room and Norman resumes his post at the front desk. Norman gets drunk and passes out in the main office and Mary decides to take a shower.
Norman wakes up, looks through his super creepy peep-hole into Mary’s bathroom and finds it a bloodbath. He knows in his gut that his mother is responsible for this and, rather than call the cops or confront his mother about what she’s done, he goes about covering it up.
Unfortunately for Norm and his mom, Mary isn’t just a loner who no one misses. Her sister, concerned that Mary has disappeared, gets together with Mary’s boyfriend and a private investigator to figure out what happened to Mary. From there, the investigation takes all kinds of interesting twists and turns while the truth is revealed about what happened to their beloved criminal on the run.
If you’ve seen the movie, where things go is no surprise to you, but for the sake of anyone that might be unfamiliar with it, I won’t spoil anything here.
Now, admittedly, I haven’t seen the film in ages, so I can’t go into any kind of side by side comparisons with it, but I can talk about how impressed I was with this book. While I was familiar with where the story was going – so the story itself wasn’t any kind of major revelation for me – I was supremely impressed with Bloch’s writing style.
I have referred back to his style multiple times throughout the year when comparing other stories because it really stuck out to me. I refer to it as minimal – he’s not a flowery in the least – and appears to very closely adhere to the Chekov’s Gun principle. If it’s not important, Bloch wastes no time on it. Which, personally, I really appreciate in this context. It provides enough information that you aren’t confused about what’s going on in the story, but leaves enough space in the narrative for your imagination to fill in the gaps for the minor details – so things like setting and ambience are as creepy as you imagine them.
Because of the writing style, the novel ends up being a tight, action-forward tale that reads cinematically. Not a word appears to be wasted and the story feels like it’s exactly the right length. It doesn’t linger on unnecessary verbiage, nor does it pass too quickly over significant events. And while the story itself is intriguing and shocking for the uninitiated, it still manages to be a masterclass in story telling and writing craft for those who are familiar with the plot.
On that same note, this probably isn’t the book for you if you are looking for a lot of character building and interpersonal relationships. While this story excels at being plot driven and takes quite a few intriguing and memorable twists and turns along the way, there isn’t a ton by way of character arc – you don’t see characters become better people or find redemption. In a surprisingly realistic way, most of the characters are pretty unlikeable and, for the most part, they stay that way. It appears to have been a stylistic choice on Bloch’s part, and I think it worked exceptionally well with this story. It keeps the reader from getting attached to the characters and adds a sense of mystery and moral ambiguity to each of them.
Overall, I think Psycho by Robert Bloch was a hit. It was a great story to start off a new year of book club and, while I’m not sure I feel quite so strongly about it that it would knock another book off my TBR list, I would likely read the sequel to this book. From what I understand, Psycho is part of a trilogy that does not follow the trajectory of the films – though I can’t say I’ve ever seen more than the first movie. Definitely worth checking out though!
