After Norman Bates has been arrested for the murder of Mary Crane and private eye Arbogast -- as related in the novel "Psycho" -- he is placed in a sanitarium for the criminally insane. There he hardly says a word, but one of the kinder doctors, Reed, and a lovely nurse, Marie, are able to do a lot to draw him out of his shell. On the other hand, the head nurse and chief attendant, busy having an affair, are less sympathetic toward all of their charges, Norman included. The head of the institute, the opera-loving Dr. Goldberg, is an old-fashioned headshrinker who thinks electro-shock therapy, now in disfavor, is a preferable method of treatment. Norman gets a surprise when Dr. Reed tells him that his heretofore unknown half-brother Robert is here to see him. Initially overjoyed to discover that he has family, Norman is afraid that Robert is responsible when some of the staff and patients in the institute start disappearing.
This suspenseful, well-written chiller takes Robert Bloch's characters and concepts and runs with them in a very satisfying mystery with a well-developed Norman Bates. Williamson also comes up with a number of clever twists. The "literary" Norman Bates is chubby and middle-aged, but Alfred Hitchcock turned him into a younger and more attractive fellow in his classic film version. This book keeps Norman as Bloch intended him to be, a variation on the real-life serial killer Ed Gein. This is certainly one of the best of the sequels to Bloch's highly-influential storyline.
Verdict: Creepy, well-constructed, and absorbing. ***1/2.
Interesting...I was not aware there was a sequel. Was a mild fan of the Perkins film sequels, was fascinated by Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake in the 1990s, and tried to get into the Bates Motel series, but it fell flat for me despite its wonderful cast.
ReplyDeleteI need to read Bloch's original book as well...
-C
I haven't read it in many years but the original novel is an okay suspense book but not the masterpiece that I feel Hitchcock's film is. Bloch did do some quite good work in later years.
ReplyDelete