The best horror is not necessarily the most shocking – it's the most plausible. “Meat” is shockingly plausible – to the point where the master himself, Stephen King, admits that this novel, quote,  “rocks”.

And he's right. Joseph D'Lacey appals, stimulates, scares and challenges in one of the strongest horror debuts in years. I never thought I'd ever even entertain the idea of becoming a vegetarian – till I read this book. Graft that onto the idea that we've only got to miss nine meals in a row before there's social meltdown, and this book is not just imaginatively scary – it's philosophically terrifying too. And very timely and topical.

Set in a dystopian future where it's nigh-on impossible to grow anything in the earth – what can you eat? Well, I'm not going to give the game away. But if there's no plants and there's no animals . . . you're maybe beginning to get the drift. The people of the town of Abyrne need their meat – or they will starve. And therefore the power of the local meat baron, Rory Magnus, seems unassailable. He controls the food supply. Yet sourcing the meat involves Magnus and his employees in the most ghastly process imaginable. D'Lacey's clearly been hanging around a few abattoirs, for every stage in the journey from kill to grill is described with unflinching accuracy. And this is precisely the way we get our meat now. Looks nice in the supermarket – but how exactly did it get there? Maybe we'd rather not know.

D'Lacey himself is not a vegetarian. He told me me so himself, and if you'd like to hear him discussing his book, click the link elsewhere on this page – it's a fascinating free listen. But he does question why meat is so central to our diet – as do certain of the characters in his book – who lead the resistance against Magnus and the whole religion which has been constructed around Abyrne's meat-packing industry in order to justify the unjustifiable.

Horror that makes you think is a clever trick to pull off. Read “Meat” or listen to the stunning full-length audio performed by acclaimed actor Sorcha Cusack, and you'll never look at a steak the same way again. Now, what's for lunch?