the magic ingredient

by Ed Halliday

In a world obsessed with diet, food, recipes, what to eat, what not to eat, fat, carbohydrate, being overweight, wouldn't it be great if there was a simple solution? Maybe some magic ingredient that could be added to food to make us all thin? Surely it would be wonderful if we could all eat whatever we wanted to and not worry about it? But maybe we should be careful what we wish for. Perhaps we can't have our cake and eat it! This darkly humorous cautionary tale of love, betrayal, jealousy and of course calories explores what could happen when one man decides to solve the obesity problem, culminating in a dystopian nightmare he could never have envisaged.

184 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 25, 2020

About the author

Ed Halliday is not your usual writer of dark humour. It has often been remarked by agents and reviewers alike that his style of writing is unusual but in a refreshing and entertaining way. There is no rambling prose put there just for the sake of filling pages and therefore fulfilling the page count criteria of a publisher, every word is there for a purpose. This is why his stories make engaging reading that keeps you turning the pages. The reason his style is so different to most is simple. He has had no formal training whatsoever, no writers workshops, no degree in creative writing, not even an ’A’ level in English. Everything that goes onto the page is untainted by the restrictive rigours imposed by years of being told how to write, it is done by instinct and a desire to produce something that he himself would enjoy reading. Born in the industrial north of England in the late sixties, Ed spent the formative years of his childhood in France where he was educated in the French state system before finishing his education in an English boarding school. He has recently returned to France to live and to write, hence the frequent references in his books to the country of his childhood.

Reviews

[Onionboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another solid story from Ed Halliday. If you like any of his other books, you will like this one. It fits right in with the style of all the others, and is probably one of his best. Of course it features a wimpy, nerdy British guy as one of the main characters, and a stereotypical mafia character. Those seems to be trademarks.

Anyway, the story fit together nicely and was enjoyable.