The Hitchcock Hotel is a 2024 mystery thriller novel published by Berkeley and written by Stephanie Wrobel. The story follows our main lead, a hotelier named Alfred Smettle (named after his hero, Mr. Hitchcock) as he invites his old buddies from his film club in college to stay a weekend at his Hitchcock themed hotel (on the house of course) to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of his business venture, but perhaps he has something more sinister planned up his sleeve? I found our main lead Alfred to be enthralling in the most creepy and unsettling ways, he’s equal parts fascinating and repulsive as a human and you can’t help but want in on his plan, or at the least want to know what he has brewing in that twisted head of his. I can’t necessarily call him the main antagonist of the story though because I’m not sure there really is set protagonists and antagonists in a story like this (at least not till we approach nearer the end of the story and more of the layers of the mystery are peeled back). Everyone is just kind of who they are and it’s your job to decide who’s the good and who’s the bad of the story as you flip the pages.
The setting of this story is awesome though, as a Hitchcock fan and admirer in many ways, I would love to stay at a hotel like this for a weekend and soak in the Hitchcockian vibes. Complete with framed Hitchcock pictures and actual movie props set up around the hotel, a full bar and a lavish dining room, a screening room showing Hitchcock’s filmography on loop day and night, an aviary of 50 crows outside, and pathways leading to a gorgeous lake, this place sounded pretty incredible if it wasn’t for the crazy person running it. Once all of the college friends arrive that’s when the story starts to really take off and odd things start to happen around them, at first just strange and off-putting scenarios, before things really start to give way to something bigger. The way this story was structured was interesting, every chapter was just named after a character in the book and that given chapter played out through the lens of that person in whatever situation they were in. A pretty simple way to structure a story really, but also pretty smart as it makes the story easy to follow. As we slowly learn more about each of the college friends, we find out that they all have something that they’re hiding in their current lives as well and everyone begins to feel more like a suspect than an innocent bystander in Alfred’s cat and mouse game. The story hints throughout it about something happening in their final year of college together, something major that caused all of them to kind of split off and drift apart after a while, but we don’t find out what for a long time, it’s like the overarching main mystery in a story already full of suspense.
This book in ways reminded me of the Clue board game as well. A real whodunnit. A lot of people inside a large and kind of creepy older house, a murder happens with a simple weapon and all of them point to one another as being a suspect and you kind of try to figure out who was the perpetrator and what the motivation would’ve been. If you’re a fan of Clue, Alfred Hitchcock, Agatha Christie, or any of them classic whodunnit mystery novels, I think it’s safe to say you’d get a kick out of this book. This was a novel made for Hitchcock fans in many ways. The way the story is structured is reminiscent of a Hitchcock story in the mystery/thriller aspects, there’s direct references and tie ins to his films throughout, and I mean the setting we’re placed in through the entire story is basically a giant shrine/memorial to the artistry of the ‘Master of Suspense’. I’d go perhaps even further and say this is a novel for film lovers in general, the main character is a huge classic film buff and all of the characters he invites to the hotel were members of the film club in college (a major tie-in to the overarching mystery of the novel), so every character is basically a movie fan in this story and film is used as a reference point a lot. I maybe wouldn’t have done everything the way she did it when unraveling the mystery here, but I really enjoyed this novel from start to finish and it was just directly up my alley in so many ways.
This felt like an ode to the mysteries of old. The setting took place in mainly one area (fortunately I loved the setting), the way the story was structured and played out was very “classic mystery tale”, and using Hitchcock himself as a main plot and setting point gave this a lot of throwback vibes. This is the perfect kind of story to dive into on a rainy day. Hitchcock and old mysteries themselves always give me cozy, rainy day vibes and when you combine the 2 for 1 story, you have the perfect cozy day recipe. I will say this is a mystery that’s a little hard to guess early on, which is a good thing overall, but this is what I meant by saying I’m not sure I would’ve structured it like this. The first half of the story is a lot of setting things up and getting to know the backstory to our cast of characters, throw you off track and make you suspicious of everyone in a way. Once a murder goes down though, the second half of the story feels balls to the walls and a lot of the information that was only hinted at to us in the first half of the story is thrown in our faces in rather quick fashion. Don’t get me wrong, it makes for some mind blowing and jaw dropping reveals (like I said, I had a lot of fun with this book), but it also kind of kills the slow burn momentum we were building through the first 200-250 pages as well. It felt kind of like we were delicately peeling back layer after layer of this mystery, but once the overarching story is more revealed to us, it’s like we just ripped into the meat of the story, and it plays out rather quickly. I’m not sure there’s a way to structure a whodunnit story that doesn’t play out like that though so I’m not going to be overly critical of her approach either. Overall though, I had a wonderful time with this book and would recommend it to mostly everyone. Especially though, if you’re an Alfred Hitchcock fan, then you need to give this book a shot, and if you’re a fan of classic mystery novels, then you need to give this book a shot.
Well, that about does it for this one. I’ll be back again soon to talk more pro wrestling, movies, and books with you all though! Thank you for giving me the time and hopefully I’ll see you again soon!
