A review by turnerevil
A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh

2.0

There are two parallel strands to this novel, the who-dunnit and the apocolyptic. For being the first (I assume) to do this the author deserves some kudos as those are both genres with a long pedigree and a new approach to both is welcome. But the problem is that in trying to do both, neither is a stand out example of either. The who-dunnit is not difficult to guess, there being a small number of suspects at the outset and even my guess turned out to be too complicated. The episode in the TV studio of "the show must go on" with staff members dropping like flies is perhaps the best of the plague scenes, but apart from that the plague feels like it is background to the story and it's only use seems to be its impact on the heronie's investigation. For example she shows little interest (and therefore we do not know) the plagues impact outside of London. Perhaps the novel suffers from the three-book-deal issue where the author must hold something back for the next two and the apocolpytic strand will be a slow-burn, later books might deliver more. The world being the way it is at the moment the prologue to this novel gave me a problem, I put the book down and did not pick it up again for a week or more, it then remains unexplained and perhaps that to will be for a future novel. However, for me, one for the library, not the shelf.