Book Review: American Gothic by Robert Bloch
It’s so sad that G. Gordon Gregg’s wife died when she drunkenly set their house on fire. And just when things were looking up for the couple. Gregg has just completed creating a new transient apartment building with a castle-like facade and a thriving pharmacy on the ground floor. Between his private medical practice and a tourist boom because of the World’s Fair filling up the rental units, Dr. Gregg is sitting pretty. But when her fiance Jim delivers the insurance check to Gregg, reporter Crystal notices a detail that makes her suspicious that the good doctor is not nearly as broken up about his wife’s death as he appears.
Crystal does some digging, and what she finds is disturbing. People around G. Gordon Gregg have a disconcerting habit of disappearing, especially women. He doesn’t pay his bills, and there are some unsavory business practices in his past. But whenever she tries to prove her suspicions, the evidence or witnesses disappear–except for one disconcerting moment when a disappeared person shows up just long enough to prove they’re not dead!
It’s clear that Crystal will have to take direct action by going undercover into the heart of the “castle” if she wants to learn the truth. But once inside, will she ever be able to get out?
This Robert Bloch (Psycho) thriller is loosely based on the real life career of Herman W. Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes. It’s been fictionalized to give it a heroine and a neater ending.
Gregg is shown to be something of a mastermind, anticipating ways he could be caught and arranging for swap-outs that refute suspicion. But he also has a long string of people he’s put off until later, and several times has to improvise their murders when they show up unexpectedly.
Crystal is fairly believable as the reporter who’s desperately trying to get promoted from filler work to byline status. She faces some well-meaning sexism, though her relationship with her fiance Jim is more marred by her accidentally costing him his insurance company job.
Her going undercover to expose Gregg is simultaneously smart and blockheaded, as she baits a trap with herself as cheese. But to be honest, just how murderous Gregg is would escape any investigator, and Crystal’s completely blindsided by his mesmerism.
A bit of romance towards the end feels shoved in to sweeten the ending.
Overall, this is middling work by a good author; worth picking up if you like old-fashioned thrillers. For a better book on the H.H. Holmes case and how it related to the World Fair, I recommend The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.
