Robert Bloch

Born in Chicago in 1917, Robert Bloch became one of the most versatile American writers of the 20th century. Early on he was encouraged by H. P. Lovecraft, but he quickly developed a voice of his own: darker, more ironic, and often more interested in the horrors of the mind than in monsters. Over a career that lasted decades, he wrote novels, hundreds of short stories, and scripts for film, radio, and television.

Bloch is most famous for his 1959 novel Psycho, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s landmark 1960 film and introduced one of fiction’s most unforgettable disturbed minds, Norman Bates. But Psycho was only part of his achievement. He also wrote widely in horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction, building a reputation for clean storytelling, clever twists, and a sly sense of humor.

He died in 1994 in Los Angeles, but his influence is still easy to spot. Readers who come to Bloch for the shocks often stay for the intelligence behind them: he understood that the scariest thing in any story is usually a person.