Louise Welsh is the author of eight novels including The Cutting Room, A Lovely Way to Burn and Death is a Welcome Guest. She has received numerous awards and international fellowships, including an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Edinburgh Napier University and an honorary fellowship from the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. Louise Welsh is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
Magnus and Job ride out of the city and deep in the countryside
discover a murder has occurred - straight from the pages of Agatha
Christie, for the setting is an isolated group in a manor house . .
. The plot gallops along while the writing crackles with the sights
and smells of a sharply imagined world . . . this book, the second
in [Welsh's] Plague Times trilogy, left me hungry for volume
three
*Independent*
Welsh is a leading figure in a group of female novelists who've
written recently about the end of days. What unites them is that
they haven't presented a world blasted by bombs and radiation.
Their literary vision is of a more gradual, and far more
terrifying, devastation
*National*
It is the sheer plausibility of this vision of a hellishly
distorted world that makes this book so enthralling and scary . . .
utterly contagious
*Sunday Mirror*
I wasn't sure what to expect from the ending given the fast pace of
the last few chapters, but I absolutely loved it and now can't wait
for the final instalment in the trilogy
*Welsh Librarian*
Thought provoking and engaging . . . an intelligently crafted book
that plays with the mind . . . What gripped me more than anything
were the little touches found throughout the book. With owners
falling prey to the sweats who's left to feed their pets? The pets
become wild and will attack for food. It's all very Stephen King! .
. . A wonderful and very quick read, Death is a Welcome Guest is
certainly welcome on my bookshelf. It will leave you with questions
long after you turn the final pages
*Milo Rambles*
A cracking good story
*Scotsman*
[Louise Welsh] is indeed a canny writer and knows when a theme or
story line is about to outstay its welcome in our imaginations.
Before that happens the tale shifts a gear and the excitement
builds to a higher pitch . . . As for the Sweats, well, we are
about to enter a drug resistant era and the last Black Death
episode in the UK was only in 1900. Food for thought while we await
Book 3 with anticipation, fear and gleeful foreboding
*Bookbag*
Welsh brilliantly summons up a tough world of terror, desperation
and dog-eat-dog survival
*Metro*
The second of Louise Welsh's Plague Times trilogy, set in a
dystopian England ravaged by the Sweats pandemic, is as grippingly
intelligent and atmospheric as the first, which is saying a great
deal . . . But the novel is far more than a modern-day
plague-ridden whodunnit. The theme of justice and belief amid chaos
is accompanied by superb dialogue and an overpowering mood of moral
and medical decay
*The Times*
A cracking story and with the way that the author brings it over to
the reader, quickly draws them into the world. The dialogue works
wonderfully well but, for me, the best part was the principle
character; I loved the way that he was accessible for readers . . .
hard to put down
*Falcata Times*
By turns social satire, prison-break tale, road novel and study of
a disintegrating cult, [an] adventurous, shape-shifting book
*Sunday Times*
Death is a Welcome Guest expands the canvas of its predecessor, but
employs even more muted and melancholy tones . . . Welsh's quest
narrative echoes everything from Arthurian romance to Sarah Perry's
wonderfully uncanny After Me Comes the Flood. In both novels,
slippery questions of identity rub sticks with religion and
sexuality. For Welsh, the resulting sparks illuminate uneasy ideas
of justice, morality and sacrifice. I have no idea where part three
is heading, but I cannot wait to find out
*Independent on Sunday*
A gripping page turner . . . The story may be fictional but the
threat, the fear, the horror is very real . . . Welsh has a natural
ability for characterisation and story-telling. Welsh is a
genre-defining writer to take an interest in; she smashes through
the boundaries and creates her own rules . . . The raw emotion as
society crumbles and restlessness takes over is palpable on every
page. It's very easy to lose yourself in this book and it almost
makes you believe you're reading a true account. You'll definitely
be keeping a close eye on the person sitting next to you on the bus
when they sneeze
*CrimeSquad*
If you're a fan of the BBC series, Survivors, either Terry Nation's
thoroughly gripping original from the 1970s or Adrian Hodges'
extremely creditable reimagining of a few years ago, then this is a
series you mustn't miss . . . Death is a Welcome Guest is a bleak,
no holds barred look at a rapidly-disintegrating society, slipping
inexorably back into the sort of devastation last seen in the 14th
century when the Black Death cut a swathe across Europe, leaving
millions dead. Like the first in the trilogy, this book poses the
question as to whether one more death amongst a host of others has
any meaning . . . With the threat of the ebola virus a constant
companion these days in the media, the book makes uncomfortable but
always wholly engrossing reading. This is post-apocalyptic
story-telling at its very best
*Crimereview*
Louise Welsh uses her story to examine where the cracks are in our
society and most especially to look at human nature in both its
good and bad forms giving a lot of pause for thought on what might
happen should the worst happen . . . I am going to be very
interested to see how the author completes the trilogy - will both
these tales merge or will there be another completely different
viewpoint? No idea but can't wait to find out . . . this is shaping
up to be a really great trilogy, one that will stay with me. I
cannot wait for the finale
*LizLovesBooks*
Welsh has produced a thriller with shades of an adult Lord of the
Flies: a dark and all too vivid picture of how survivors will go to
any lengths to go on surviving . . . She sets out to paint an all
too frightening and convincing picture of how the human race would
deal with finding itself in extremis. Her characters are icons, yet
individuals; her images of a superficially idyllic countryside with
rot and destruction just under the surface are all too appallingly
realistic
*Promoting Crime*
Welsh's fast-moving tale switches from a terrifically choreographed
prison break to a road-trip through a post-plague landscape . . .
Welsh imbues what could have been a simple narrative with more
profound meaning and resonance . . . After the thrilling climax,
readers will be desperate to find out what happens next in what,
Welsh assures us, will be the final entry in this fascinating,
unsettling and all-too-plausible trilogy
*Sunday Herald*
Almost everything about this scenario is familiar, from the
abandoned luxury hotels to the looped news bulletins on TV . . .
But Welsh's writing is so effective that it was as if I were
encountering these tropes again for the first time; as if I was 12
again and watching Threads the 1980s BBC nuclear drama to which
this series is clearly indebted. Richly imagined and, in Welsh's
hands, horribly plausible
*Guardian*
A taut menacing thriller that will keep you riveted until the
end
*Candis*
The second volume of Welsh's disturbing dystopian trilogy makes for
grim but compelling reading
*Scotsman*
Stunningly imagined, hugely scary
*Irish Independent*
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