Autumn term at Maybury University and as the nights draw in so does an atmosphere of menace. Dan Latcher, a previously quiet and withdrawn student, blossoms overnight into the forceful, illusion-working leader of The Crack - an organisation with the power to shape and alter its followers' personalities, pushing them on to mindless heights of pleasure and pain.
When hitherto bright and vivacious Stephanie Peele becomes one of his converts, her worried room-mate Annie enlists the support of fellow student Ian. While the campus is further beset by an unknown knife-wielding psychopath, Annie and Ian pit their strength against the forces of evil as personified by Latcher and his infinitely more potent puppet master, Peregrine Stitch, voraciously sucking in new converts body and soul...
Mark Morris became a full-time writer in 1988 on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw the release of his first novel, Toady. He has since published a further sixteen novels, among which are Stitch, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. His short stories, novellas, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of the highly-acclaimed Cinema Macabre, a book of fifty horror movie essays by genre luminaries, for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award.