PSYCHO HOUSE

by Robert Bloch ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 1990

Rock bottom in Bloch's Psycho series. The late psychotic Norman Bates and his mummified mother are such national institutions that a greedy landowner in Fairvale has rebuilt the burned-down Bates mansion and motel and turned them into a mini-theme park. Now when you enter the motel to sign in, a wax figure of Norman spins behind the desk and says, ""Welcome to the Bates Motel. Your room is ready."" The infamous shower where Marian Crane was stabbed to death is restored, and Mother too is back to her old state in the cellar. It's 30 years since Norman's big rampage, but investigative reporter Amy Haines sees a new book and many unanswered questions in ol' Norman. Two children sneak into the restoration in the dead of night, a week before its scheduled opening, and one of them is murdered. Then follow a hundred pages of Amy's brain-numbing person-by-person investigation of people in town who might know something about the Bates case: people drawn with such utter banality that each word they speak and character trait that Bloch puts forth about them adds to the sense of watching a four-hour egg-timer drop sand. When a pair of bloody bodies at last does appear, the reader's heart monitor stays dead level. Unlike Hitchcock's masterpiece, wherein horrors happen to you, here they happen mostly offstage and are found later. Best moments in the novel are Bloch's knockoffs from Thomas Harris' Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, with the greatest psychotic master of Bates lore kept under lock and key at an asylum and approached for leads about murders going on in the real world. Will leave 12-year-olds yawning.

Pub Date: March 15, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Tor--dist. by St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION