Fiction Reviews
Bad Things Happen Here
(2026) Mark Morris, Flame Tree Press, £20 / Can$34.95 /US$26.95,
hrdbk, 313pp, ISBN 978-1-805-52007-8
Mark Morris might be better known these days as the editor, nay curator of some of the best annual horror anthologies around, starting with New Fears and New Fears 2 – and why weren’t they continued? Silly Titan Books, but Morris moved from Titan to Flame Tree Press who have published his ABC of Horror anthologies started with After Sundown and now he is busy at work putting together the “G” book, Ghost Lights. But editing duties aside, Morris is actually a pretty fine and prolific horror author in his own right, starting way back in 1989 with Toady and all the way up to 2026 with the publication of Bad Things Happen Here. He is one of the very essential and important British horror novelists of the last almost forty years.
If anyone has read my other horror reviews, I often mention that trope or horror sub-genre of “you don’t want to go there” where someone ventures to a place that they soon really wish they hadn’t. Morris has gone one better by combining that trope with another, that is of people reuniting years after experiencing a trauma in their past. Think IT by Stephen King, or Ghost Story by Peter Straub, or Ramsey’s Campbell’s Incarnate reviewed by yours truly elsewhere on this site, as well as more recent novels like Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi and The Books of Accidents by Chuck Wendig.
I often mention that I am a reluctant reader, shuddering at the thought of meaty tomes, populated by chapters that are thirty pages long or more – shudder – but while Bad Things Happen Here is at first a slow burn of a story, it certainly isn’t a slow read, and coming in at just over 300 pages with 38 chapters broken up by additional flashback chapters set in 2004 which reveal the true horror of what occurred back then, it is my sort of read.
2004? Yes, over 20 years ago in 2004, 6 students arrive at a London university and quickly become friends, but their lives are changed forever when they become entangled with a supernatural force connected to Room 516, just another room in an otherwise unremarkable hall of residence. The experience is so devastating that one of the group takes their own life, shattering the friendship and sending the survivors in separate directions.
They thought it was all over, the past was stuck in the past, but now it has caught up with them, and Room 516 has unfinished business. The remaining five friends are now middle-aged, carrying the burdens of ordinary lives. Hannah Prentice is struggling to cope with looking after her children and her mother who might have dementia. Artist Jess Maple looks like she is about to finally make it on the professional front, if only her personal life wasn’t such a mess. Architect Steve Lazenby’s daughter suffers from disturbing nightmares. Max Bradshaw worries about his teenage son going off the rails. Finally, Michael Vance, who was once the leader of this group is now a homeless drug addict.
In telling the story, Morris carefully builds up each character and their world, which are falling apart with the trials and tribulations of middle age, many of which could be labelled as horror with a small 'h', be it dealing with ageing parents, or trying to cope with the trials and tribulations that their own children are facing, or the regrets of what they have done with their own lives since those university years. Soon, small 'h' horror builds to large 'H' horror as the secrets of what happened in Room 516 are revealed, and the reader is trapped in the tale just as much as the lead characters. Recommended.
Ian Hunter
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