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)

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.

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.

The best of the series

I thought this was the best book of the trilogy. This book had very few slow spots and it was full of constant plot development

A good who-done-it loosely based on Psycho

This book was a good who-done-it, and it’s made all the more interesting because it occurs in the world of Norman Bates/Psycho. The performance by Richard Powers is quite good. He performs all three of the Bloch Psycho novels and does a fine job with all of them.

First, the good. The story contains interesting characters, a good overall story, and less of the Over the Top, grotesque depictions seen in Psycho II. The story moves swiftly and adequately shows the impact Norman Bates had on Fairvale.

The bad. The ending presented neither a surprising twist, nor a solution that any reasonable reader could have predicted. Part of the fun of these sorts of mystery stories is putting the pieces together yourself, or at least being able to see the full picture looking back. That is not possible with this story. I can’t help but compare it to Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes stories, where there may have been subtle items that get revealed at the end, but most people who read those stories would have the tools at their disposal to make an educated guess on the solution (especially if they’re applying Holmes’ methods!). The story lacks that same sophisticated charm, and therefore, it most likely won’t be one I revisit.

I genuinely enjoyed the first Psycho novel, but have always been of the mind that it is one of the few instances where the movie is better than the book. I expected that Bloch would have done more with the world of Psycho and his later installments are a bit of a let down. All that said, it was still an enjoyable story, and worth listening, if you enjoy the world of Psycho.

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.

ummm ok 😐

every time it started to get good the reader would call out the next chapter sometimes going into something completely different. I think he was try to be suspenseful but it was just annoying. More of a multiple character study trying to be put in a story. sometimes hard to follow because he would all of the sudden say a name that he talked about three chapters ago. the error was kinda funny in chapter 11. The reader himself did a great job and if I'm being honest the writer effortlessly added descriptions or related surroundings in a colorful manner.

Good Story

if you have listened to the first two in this series you will enjoy this, although I found it predictable. the characters were likeable and easy to relate to, which made it an easy listen

Fine

It was fine. Not great but fine. I make short films & I actually felt inspired by the story as a filmmaker but I would completely rewrite the dialogue.