From Robert Bloch's Psycho to Chekhov's Lady With the Dog, Mark Watson explores the magnetism of hotels for novelists
Janet Leigh in Hitchcock's Psycho … Robert Bloch's novel reveals more of Bates's mind and still delivers potent suspense and horror. Photograph: Allstar
The hotel is a seductive setting for a writer. It houses a wide spectrum of people who do not know each other, yet who spend nights under the same roof and are affected by one another's behaviour in ways they may not be conscious of: they hear each other's bathwater draining away, they catch snippets of conversations in the lifts. A couple in a hotel lobby might be lifelong partners, or lovers making the most of anonymity. A gang of three who arrive at 2am might be business colleagues who have just closed a deal in a different time zone, or murderers who've recently disposed of their victim.
With all this in mind, I set about writing my novel Hotel Alpha, which is based in a grand London hotel but comes with 100 extra stories to reflect the nearly infinite variety of life in these places. Here are some of my more illustrious predecessors in the "hotel novel" sub-genre.
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With all this in mind, I set about writing my novel Hotel Alpha, which is based in a grand London hotel but comes with 100 extra stories to reflect the nearly infinite variety of life in these places. Here are some of my more illustrious predecessors in the "hotel novel" sub-genre.
1. The Shining by Stephen King
One of the worst advertisements for the hotel and leisure industry. A writer takes an off-season caretaking job at the Overlook hotel, hoping to catch up on his work and put recent alcoholism behind him. Things don't go well. The film adaptation made the book famous, but the novel is darker and more perceptive.More
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