It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates Motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty, but clean, and the manager seemed nice, if a little odd.
This classic horror novel, which inspired the famous film by Alfred Hitchcock, has been thrilling people for fifty years. It introduced one of the most unexpectedly-twisted villains of all time in Norman Bates, the reserved motel manager with a mother complex, and has been called the “first psychoanalytic thriller.”
Regardless of your age, it's likely that you've viewed the famous shower scene from the Alfred Hitchcock movie PSYCHO, or its remake. This is the book that inspired the thriller and introduced Norman Bates, the seemingly mild-mannered manager of the Bates Motel, where madness lurks. Paul Garcia turns in a strong performance as the twisted villain. As Bates, Garcia can be childlike and simple or harsh and threatening--and just strange enough to keep you wondering. He's much less demonstrative with regard to most of the other characters, especially the potential victim, Mary Crane. His portrayal of Sam and Lila, the town's storekeepers is especially weak. Still, Norman as played by Garcia is clearly the star here, and Garcia is top-notch as the character that counts the most. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
New York Times...
'Icily terrifying!'
About the Author
ROBERT BLOCH (1917–1994) began writing short fiction in the 1930s and published his first short novel, The Scarf, in 1947. In 1959, the year Psycho was published, Bloch won the Hugo Award and began to write for television and film as well. His autobiography, Once around the Bloch, was his last major work.
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