A Lovely Way to Burn

A Lovely Way to Burn (2014) is the first book in the Plague Times trilogy. A pandemic called ‘The Sweats’ is sweeping the globe. London is a city in crisis. Hospitals begin to fill with the dead and dying, but Stevie Flint is convinced that the sudden death of her boyfriend Dr Simon Sharkey was not from natural causes. As roads out of London become gridlocked with people fleeing infection, Stevie’s search for Simon’s killers takes her in the opposite direction, into the depths of the dying city and a race with death.

Published by John Murray, 2014

ISBN:  978-1848546516

Reviews

The writer she reminds me of most is Ian McEwan: both specialise in secrets, rather chilly sexuality, sudden reversals of fortune, and uneasy intimations of doom . . . Welsh fits the disaster novel like a glove.
The Independent

. . . the London of the novel at once recalls sci-fi dystopias, Dante’s Inferno and accounts of the 1665 great plague 
The Sunday Times

This is a chilling novel set in a totally convincing feral world – and utterly gripping.
The Sunday Mirror

This comment on what catastrophe may actually do to society makes Welsh’s take on the dystopia less conservative and Wells-like, recalling instead writers such as Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood. The pace and thriller-style of the narrative pitch her tale towards the commercial end of the market, but her lone female in a world dominated by men gives it the subversive edge of a more literary work.
The Scotsman

Louise Welsh writes elegantly and has pictured London in extremis in immense and detailed clarity. It is all very exciting and there are two more volumes to come.
Literary Review

Scary, shocking and touching in turns this apocalyptic thriller will enthral. I haven’t been so buried in a book for a while.
The Irish Times

It kept me up all night nervously turning the pages.
Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Bookseller

As I read it on the train, I was ultra sensitive to every person around me who coughed or sneezed or even so much as sniffed. Welsh has taken our everyday lives, given them a twist, and put them in the background of an intriguing, addictive novel
The Girl Reporter

Great if you like tense thrillers
Heat

A seriously chilling read.
Marie Clare

. . . a propulsive read written in lean sentences and snappy cliff-hanging chapters, Stevie Flint seems an ideal heroine for our age.
Metro

A taut thriller so involving that I missed my bus stop!
Women and Home

As with her previous novels, Welsh weaves thoughtful, emotional themes into a thriller plot – and does it very well.
Killing Crime

The relentlessly taut suspense of A Lovely Way to Burn still lingers on in my psyche.
Stylist

This is can’t put down good.
Candis