Psycho House

By: Robert Bloch

Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia

The new Bates Motel is a tourist attraction, a re-creation of the infamous murder site, and the developers are already counting their profits. But there’s a new exhibit that nobody expected: the bloody corpse of a teenage girl crumpled in the front hall, stabbed to death. Among the avalanche of press and publicity is reporter and true-crime book writer Amelia Haines, who is studying the original Psycho killings. To her, the new murders are a golden opportunity; if she can become part of the investigation, perhaps track down the killer herself, then her fame and fortune will be assured. But catching the madman won’t be easy: the town is full of suspects, and Amy’s best informants keep turning up murdered. If she isn’t careful, Amelia Haines may become the next permanent guest at the Bates Motel.

Robert Bloch (1917-1994) was a horror, suspense, and science fiction writer and screenwriter, best known for the novel Psycho. Altogether, he wrote over 220 stories collected in over two dozen collections, two dozen novels, screenplays for a dozen movies, and three Star Trek episodes. His many awards include the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards (including Lifetime Achievement), and five Bram Stoker Awards. His autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, was his last major work.

©1990 Robert Bloch (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Bloch’s superb storytelling skills, combined with his masterful use of tension and suspense, make for excellent reading.” (School Library Journal)

A bit disappointing

The story was not up to previous books' caliber in this saga. Was barely able to finish.

Loved this book

I love psycho so it's was great to listen to and hear a rebuilt perspective.

Better Than Psycho 2 but...

This one is better than Psycho 2 (which is completely terrible on all storytelling levels). Sadly, for many pieces of this one to make sense, you need to make it through Psycho 2. The story, however, is Psycho in name only. There's the house, there's Fairvale, there's some Bates thrown in for good measure. It's all wrapped in a nice little mystery but overall it just is. As a huge fan of the first Psycho novel and Hitchcock's film, I'm very curious why Bloch went in the direction that he did with the sequels to his most popular piece of writing. As he did wonderfully with Psycho and then pretty disastrously (in my opinion) with Psycho 2, he weakly relies on somewhat thin psychological commentary in order to help achieve the overall climax of his story.

On a positive: The narration on this one is great and the performance made the novel very listenable. So if you are into this genre and like a good small town murder mystery with great narration, add this one to your list.

An alright time waster

Book was an alright read, very predictable ending though. I feel like you could tell the ending by like half way through at least.

Psycho meh…

Wasn’t the Janet Leigh character’s name Marian?
A bit long, but plenty of murders and theories! Try to guess whodunit! Denouement a bit weak.