Cannon fodder

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. Stories so black they should come with a torch, Cannon Fodder takes you to a place where life isn't just cheap, they're giving it away.