Psycho ~ Robert Bloch

This is not the graphic horror that I was expecting, and it’s not particularly long, and because the story is so well known the revelations did not surprise, but I can expect it would have been an excellent read when first published in 1959.

Bloch does an excellent job of building the character of the self loathing Norman Bates.  There are three fractured characters, Norman the man who runs the Bates Motel, Norman the child who needs his mother, and then there’s Mother herself.  Mother is insanely jealous and when Norman shows an interest in a young lady who’s traveling alone it only spells danger.  The problem is the young woman is on the run with an investigator after her and it doesn’t take long to track her movements down to the Bates Motel. 

The famous shower scene is very disappointing— Mary is in the shower and when she sees the butcher's knife Bloch says it “was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head." Not a great deal of drama and horror there is there?!

What I liked about this novel was the question  it asked—how well do we know somebody?  And even—how well do we know ourselves?

Not a bad read at all but it shows what a great job Hitchcock did with the movie.