Little Red Hen's Book Club - Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh

 

 

This is scary shit, my friends.

 

The second in the Plague Times trilogy finds Magnus McFall, a second rate comedian just about to make it big, trying to survive the pandemic labelled The Sweats which is killing off the world.  He ends up in prison after trying to save a drunken girl being raped.  He winds up in the vulnerable prisoners wing for paedophiles and rapists and after his first cell-mate dies from the Sweats, he is moved in with Jeb, a very large and intimidating fellow who remains vague about why he's in the VP wing.  They manage to escape the prison, fighting their way past the roving gangs of other prisoners, run the gauntlet of soldiers outside the prison who are disoriented because nobody's in charge and flee into the Underground system.  After stealing motorbikes and heading north (Magnus is trying to get home to the Orkneys to his mum and sister who he is sure are still alive), they are rescued from a Mad Maxesque gang, driving the expensive cars they could never have driven if their previous owner hadn't died, by a camouflage-wearing vicar who takes them to a country house owned by a Catholic priest to recuperate.

 

 The book is categorized as a mystery but the mystery doesn't start until they get to this house and meet a group of lost souls who all seem a wee bit mad.  One of their group has committed suicide, another has seemingly left the group but turns up dead.  Someone shoots the army vicar in the back of the head.  The priest, encouraged by a group of shifty men who show up at the house,  turns vigilante and wanting to determine the new order of things when they discover Jeb has killed a woman and her child (he claims innocence),   set up a gallows in order to hang him and invite  other survivors to watch.  While the leader of this new group organizes things, the priest gleefully brews up some kind of poisonous potion to kill the rest of the group.  Magnus rescues Jeb, a couple of the saner ones of the group and an mute orphaned child and they flee.  Some of them stay at another little community, Jeb gets dropped off in the middle of nowhere while Magnus and the little boy make their way to his island home.  They are met on the beach by Stevie Flint, survivor from the first part of the trilogy.

 

This reminded me so much of that British TV series called "Survivors"  that I had to look up whether or not Louise Welsh was involved in that project.  She wasn't but I guess if you're writing about the apocalyptic end of the world, there's really only one way it can go. All hell is breaking loose and unless you have some means of protecting yourself, you better make friends with the people with the guns.

 

This was a good reminder of how thin a veneer of morality and civility we live with.  Looking forward to the third and final part - hopefully some good news.