Robert Bloch (1917–1994)

It’s rare to be able enjoy a book and its movie adaptation equally. The characters are so wonderfully drawn, it’s impossible to not have strong feelings about them all, from the skin-crawling creepiness of Norman Bates to anger and impatience for the complacently incompetent sheriff. The story and the pop-psychology it depends on is a little dated now, but not enough to detract from the fun.

Sometimes the best part of a thriller is the big reveal at the end. No doubt Psycho has an excellent one, for the .0001% of readers who don’t already know. But for the rest of us, there’s no loss in reading pleasure for already knowing the book’s secrets. The author has so many tongue-in-cheek references to it, that it’s almost designed for re-reads. Every time I came across a seemingly innocent remark or reference with a double-meaning, I genuinely laughed out loud.

Audiobook, via Audible. Paul Michael Garcia’s narration is fantastic – his Norman gave me shivers, but he voiced every character and their POV perfectly. At only 5 ½ hours of audio, Psycho is just short enough to go on my annual Halloween reading list.… (more)

Looking through other reviews, it sounds as if the contents of this book may have differed in the US edition compared to the UK one I read, which was based on a 1974 British hardback edition, so the contents of the one I read was as follows:
The Opener of the Way
The Cloak
Beetles
The Fiddler's Fee
The Mannikin
The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
The Seal of the Satyr
The Dark Demon
The Faceless God

For stories written in the 1930s, the tales are not so disconcerting to modern sensibilities as some of the 1950s collections I've read this year. That's not to say there are no racist stereotypes cropping up occasionally, as in one story where a very minor character is described in terms that would not be acceptable these days. Bloch avoids the endemic tendency in old pulp fiction to describe women as feeble minded and trivial, mainly by not having women at all in many of his stories, but in the 'The Cloak', where a woman does feature as an alluring and outspoken character with whom the hero is hopelessly infatuated, this turns out to have a supernatural explanation.

A couple of tales veer into HP Lovecraft territory, 'The Dark Demon' actually name-checking Lovecraft, and having a hero somewhat based upon him. If I remember rightly, as a writer in his teens, Bloch did exchange letters with Lovecraft who was a prolific correspondent, and received encouragement. His take on Lovecraft themes is more original than a lot of later derivative fiction, as he brings in new elements such as the Egyptian setting in 'The Faceless God'.

Others show originality, such as 'The Mannikin'. The same basic idea was used many years later as the basis for a very striking X-Files episode, but Bloch did it first. Another, 'The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton' is straight science fiction, but with a strong psychological component. 'The Fiddler's Fee' is a traditional folktale of dealings with the devil and foregrounds the real historical character of Paganini, or at least the character as portrayed in popular culture. 'Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper' is an intriguing tale where I did guess the twist quite early on, but I imagine people of the time would have been less likely to do so having not seen the same idea re-used in later TV shows etc. Despite that, I enjoyed the story until the aforementioned racist stereotype applied to someone in a bar caused me to stumble.

All in all, quite an interesting collection of tales of the supernatural and strange, with a science fiction story added to the mix.… (more)