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 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. ( )

This was part one of The Plagues Time Trilogy, but can be read alone. Stevie (short for Stephanie) is caught up with trying to reconcile her doctor boyfriend's death during the time of "sweats." A good thriller/mystery. This was 99 cents from Kindle, and well worth it. I will probably read the other two books in this trilogy after I get some of my older series finished. 369 pages ( )

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 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. ( )

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 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. ( )

DNF at 63%. Ultimately I did not care about the main character or what she was investigating.