“Fountain of youth? More like murderous medication!

Carrie Kromer pushes the boundaries of science, not her social life. The brilliant behavioral gerontologist’s idea of a good time is hanging out with her beloved lab rats and taking care of her elderly mother and the other eccentric old folks at the nursing home. So no one is more surprised than Carrie when she steals the lab’s top-secret, experimental medicine for aging in reverse.

Two-time ex-con Johnny Fairfax dreams of culinary greatness. But when his corrupt parole officer tries to drag him from the nursing home kitchen, the suddenly young-again residents spring to his defence and murder the guy—and then request Johnny cook them an evidence devouring dinner to satisfy their insatiable side-effect appetite.

As their unexpected mutual attraction gets hot, Carrie and Johnny find themselves caught up with the authorities who arrive to investigate the killing. But even more dangerous than the man-eating not-so-senior citizens could be the arrival of death-dealing pharmaceutical hitmen.

Can Carrie and Johnny find true love in all this bloody madness?

Cooking for Cannibals is a dark comic thriller with a heaping helping of romance. If you like fast-paced plots, unconventional characters, and humor that crosses the line, then you’ll have a feast with Rich Leder’s wild ride.”

Welcome to damppebbles. Ryan here again. I’m sure you have a favourite book in the “Gerontologist and Cook” genre and are fearing it is a saturated market (🤪). But read on, for this is a novel not be missed!  Cooking for Cannibals is fast paced, thought provoking, humorous and characterful, and will leave you scouring the book sites and book shops for more from Rich Leder.

Leder has created a comic novel the likes of which Carl Hiaasen would be proud of. Brilliantly characterised characters, larger than life miscreants, a situation that no matter how twisted it seems can always be wrung further, sucking helpless readers in to find out what is going to happen next.

Carrie and Johnny are two interesting lead characters. As the blurb explains, you wouldn’t expect to find that they know each other. So when the storyline throws them together, facing everyone and everything private pharma can throw at them, they make an interesting pairing!  If you had an age reversing drug rejuvenating the inhabitants of an old folks home and needed to keep it quiet, you would not want your main confident to be someone this different from you who you didn’t trust, but that’s exactly the situation Carrie and Johnny end up in.  I loved how well we got to know these two characters, their feelings, drives, doubts and thoughts on the various situations they found themselves in.  Something a standalone novel allows is that ability for an author to draw everything out of a character rather than having to save some secret backstory or character flaw for the next book.  Leder doesn’t just wring his characters out, he puts them through hell and back for the delectation and delight of the reader.

This is one of those rare books that I couldn’t put down. It delighted me every time I picked it up and it’s probably the only book I’ll ever read where I think the cannibals are in the right!  If you are looking for escapism after a rotten 2020. If you want to sit back and be entertained by a colourful cast on an incredible adventure, then this is your 2020 tonic!  A fantastic book from an author that I will happily return to.

I chose to read and review an eARC of Cooking for Cannibals. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

Cooking for Cannibals by Rich Leder was published in the UK by Laugh Riot Press on 14th January 2021 and is available in digital format (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): | amazon.co.uk | amazon.com |

Rich Leder has been a working writer for more than three decades. His credits include 19 produced movies—television films for CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark and feature films for Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Longridge Productions, and Left Bank Films—and six novels for Laugh Riot Press.

He’s been the lead singer in a Detroit rock band, a restaurateur, a Little League coach, an indie film director, a literacy tutor, a magazine editor, a screenwriting coach, a wedding guru, a PTA board member, a commercial real estate agent, and a visiting artist for the UNCW Film Studies Department, among other things, all of which, it turns out, was grist for the mill.

He resides on the North Carolina coast with his awesome wife, Lulu, and is sustained by the visits home of their three fabulous children.