A Lovely Way to Burn

When Stevie's boyfriend doesn't show up, she figures he stood her up. It had been a casual relationship anyway and she assumed he'd lost interest. She still goes by his apartment to pick up the things she'd left there, and discovers his body. A pandemic is sweeping across Britain, but Stevie is certain his death was murder. And so, in a city convulsing into uncertainty, she sets out to figure out what happened.

I've had this book on my shelf for a few years, but the pandemic setting had me pulling it down. It really grabbed me -- Welsh's virus is a far deadlier and easily spread than what we're dealing with, but she nailed some of the human behavior and the uncertainty that does as much to destabilize things as the disease itself. And show more having the novel be about solving a murder rather than about the pandemic itself made this a good distraction. Welsh puts together a good story and I've already picked up the second in this trilogy. show less

I enjoyed the writing, Louise Welsh always manages to create a slightly unnerving off-kilter atmosphere, and the juxtaposition of Stevie, a shopping channel presenter, and the worlds decent into dystopia as a deadly virus hits was interesting. Stevie has a superficially glamorous surgeon boyfriend, Simon, but he is found dead, she believes murdered. She recovers from the virus, and sets out to find out who killed him and why. I did enjoy the storytelling, but did find Stevie's quest a little far fetched, considering the world was falling down around her, I'm not sure I would particularly care about a medical malpractice story under the circumstances.

Normally I'm avoiding post-apocalyptic scenarios like the plague they are often employing. There is, however, absolutely no way in this world that I'm going to miss anything written by Louise Welsh no matter how leery of the subject matter I may find myself. So could one of my favourite authors make me accept the whole pandemic thing? To save you wading through the rest of this. Yes.

At the centre of A LOVELY WAY TO BURN there is the mystery of how surgeon Simon Sharkey died. Given the pandemic raging it seems likely that his girlfriend Stevie Flint is the only person that cares. Which is kind of understandable. As 'the Sweats' starts to take grip, the city of London is in chaos. There are riots, gridlocked traffic, emergency services show more struggling with personnel going down with the same virus, hospitals filling with sick people and the bodies of the dead.

Stevie has had her own battle with the virus and somehow she's now one of the survivors. She should be of great interest to authorities, if they weren't preoccupied, or compromised. Whilst she battles against the city and population gone mad to find out what happened to Simon, friends, colleagues and support systems crumble.

It's a real testament to how good a writer Welsh is that the whole pandemic, riot, madhouse thing works despite there not really being a lot of new ground to be mined in there. The interweaving of the murders does add a strikingly "normal" aspect to life - and you can almost feel the pointless of Stevie's quest. It's also a testament to Welsh's writing that makes you care about what happened to Simon, even when the details of his involvements are eventually revealed. The pace of this book is terrific, and the plot, in the main solid. Stevie, however, is a real standout - determined and fair, she's driven initially by a desire for the truth for Simon, despite the unravelling of his solid reputation.

A LOVELY WAY TO BURN is the first book in Louise Welsh's 'Plague Times' trilogy, which means that for a while to come, I'm going to be pointing out I don't like post-apocalyptic scenarios.. except when Louise Welsh is writing them.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-lovely-way-burn-louise-welsh show less

It doesn't look like murder in a city full of death.
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.

My Thoughts: May Contain Spoilers

From reading the description of the book I felt that the story wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought the story was going to be along the same lines as Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’. The reason being is show more that I thought that with the killer flu going around called The Sweats’ it reminded me of the killer flu Captain Trips’. The story turned out to be a crime thriller with the flu has it’s background.

The main character and our heroine Stevie Flint is quite spunky and I quite liked her as a character and as this book is only the first in a trilogy the reader knows that they will see more of her. Also because she has had the flu and has survived it will be interesting to see how the further boos will develop.

This book was quite pacy and I quite enjoyed it and will look out for the next instalment but I was just expecting something else. show less

In A Lovely Way to Burn, author Louise Welsh has done an excellent job of combining two genres into one exciting story. While a pandemic called The Sweats is rampaging through the city of London, killing people by the thousands, Stevie Flint discovers her doctor boyfriend, Simon, has been murdered. She barely takes this in when she falls ill herself with the disease. After days of this feverish illness, she recovers enough to embark on a quest to discover the truth behind Simon’s death.

As London falls into chaos and those still healthy are desperately trying to escape the city, she relentlessly hunts down and questions Simon’s associates. Stevie finds herself pretty much alone in this as slowly the city shuts down, the police show more become non-existent, the army appears to give up and London becomes a lawless, unsafe place to be.

A Lovely Way to Burn is the first volume in a planned trilogy called The Plague Times so I expect we will learn more about this devastating pandemic in later installments. The book is fast paced, filled with action and although this particular story is wrapped up at the end, there is still plenty of material left for the author to explore. I have the next two volumes and I am looking forward finding out where the author is going to take us. show less

The pandemic called "the Sweats" hits London. Most people die shortly after becoming symptomatic. Stevie Flint, a TV presenter becomes very ill, but manages to survive while all around her people are dying and society is disintegrating. The plot holding all this together is that Stevie believes that her boyfriend was murdered (rather than dying from the Sweats), and she wants to find out who did it. So while set during an apocalyptic breakdown of society, this is actually a crime/thriller novel.
This may not have been the best choice of reading materials during our own "plague times," but I read these three compulsively, one after the other. Louise Welsh is primarily a psychological thriller writer, and I've enjoyed a few of her books in show more the past. These just had that extra little pandemic element tossed in, and the pandemic in these books was so bad that we can feel a little bit fortunate, as bad as covid is. show less

Stevie (Stephanie) Flint is a mostly believable protagonist in a near-future biological plague story set in and around London. Stevie catches the the plague, the "sweats", early and survives, whereas her friends and acquaintances all succumb to it.
However, once well, Stevie is pursuing the killer of her boyfriend, so this is a crime story, which reads well as Stevie is a former journalist, so she knows how to follow a story and make people tell her their view.
This may sound strange and far fetched, but Louise Welsh makes it all fit together well and generally keeps you page turning with short dynamic chapters. So it works as a crime story in the near future whilst mankind generally dies around her. Stevie solves the question of the show more killer of her boyfriend at the end of this book, but this is the first of a "Plague times" trilogy, so presumably the story will now follow mankind in the search for a possible cure (perhaps using Stevie as a guinea pig, as she is a survivor, the only one we know of) and cause for the epidemic.
I keep reading Louise Welsh stories, as I enjoy her style and characterisation, but the story keeps disappointing. This time it was the implausibility of Stevie's actions in chapter 40 near the end of the book.
I will probably read the sequel, as I do enjoy this doom laden catastrophe story, but I am still waiting for Louise Welsh to successfully pull it all together. show less