Carnivore is a book about a desperate plot by a New York restauranteur to make the money he owes, by catering for an elite dining club looking for something unprecedented. Kash’s exotic meat restaurant caused him to become embroiled with loan shark Boris and now Kash needs to pay up. When he has the chance to impress uber rich Victor, who happens to be part of a secret billionaire dining club, Kash formulates a plan to offer Victor something to impress his billionaire club, taking gruesome inspiration.
This thriller isn’t for the squeamish, but for those who aren’t, it’s a fun take on the ‘character in debt has to go to extreme lengths to escape a loan shark’ story that also plays with ideas of fine dining and the New York restaurant scene. Despite being a thriller, the book has a fairly slow pace, with a lot of flashbacks to Kash growing up in Bangladesh, and it explores the world of immigrants in the USA as well as the main thriller plotline. The ending is much faster, perhaps a bit too fast and without fully addressing all of the threat and tension that came before, but regardless it does follow through on what it sets up as the main narrative. One interesting point is that, in my (vegetarian) opinion, the descriptions of the meat aren’t quite as luscious and visceral as some other novels centred around food, which means the reader isn’t quite as drawn into the meal and its “unprecedented” conclusion (which may be a good or a bad thing).
I had fun with this novel, which you can easily imagine adapted into a film, and the current interest in media around restaurants and high end food hopefully means that the right audience will find it. If you like crime thrillers that are a bit deeper and with a satirical side, Carnivore is an enjoyable ride.
Fiendfully Reading 
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