Viciously hilarious and savagely inventive… welcome to the world of Cannon Fodder, where...

... black just got a little darker.

 

Cannon Fodder concerns itself with the ordinary things in life - a fancy dress disco that turns into a bloodbath, a man in debt forced to make a life-changing decision, a journey into a land of sexual adventure that goes tragically wrong, and a man with big responsibilities hamstrung by depression…

David L. Hayles's debut collection of stories, The Suicide Kit, drew comparisons with Roald Dahl, Ian McEwan and Iain Banks. In Cannon Fodder, Hayles gives us a world of demented misfits, sleazy sex tourists, killer inmates, has-beens and never-weres.

In The Process, a desperate man signs up to rid himself of his debts but at a terrible cost; in Savage Incidents at the College Reunion, an alumni fancy dress disco descends into a bloodbath thanks to an inopportune choice of costume; and in Death Row Diary, a brutish warden's censoring of letters has grim results.

Elsewhere there are excursions into the variously doomed and sordid worlds of failed western actors, homicidal would-be writers and the suburban dogging scene.