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Naming The Bones

An assured pace sees this intricately plotted novel develop gradually towards an explosive finale. A fine balance between the urban universities and the desolately remote Scottish islands, creates an evocative setting for a mixture of betrayal, darkness and secrets.
Books Quarterly

What is most impressive though is the characterisation. The main cast is expertly drawn, but it's the bit part players that linger in the memory and give the novel its texture and depth: the morose and disappointed librarian, the buttoned-up B&B landlady serving carrots from a tin and worrying about mud on the carpet, the drunken teenagers on Sauchiehall Street and sozzled academics cluttering up the West End boozers.
Claire Black in The Scotsman

Welsh creates a vivid sense of place and a convincing character in troubled Watson; she paces revelations with care and keeps you hooked to the end.
Metro
 
As Louise Welsh continues to writes excellent thrillers and the typeface of her name on the cover grows bigger with every bestseller, her work would stand proudly on its own merit. She writes a great book, and this is a thriller of a different order.
Courier Mail  (Australia)

Naming the Bones is a well-crafted and entertaining book. Welsh has the ability to dig deep beneath the surface of her subjects. Ultimately, she wields a pen that will keep you hunting for clues to the end.
The Globe and Mail (Canada)

What sticks in the memory are the moments of flashing wit and brilliant prose which illuminate the darkness and light the way. Naming the Bones is that good.
Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

. . . precise imaginative prose and clever metaphors makes it an atmospheric read.
The Age (Australia)

. . . builds to a wonderfully mud drenched peak Herald Sun (Australia)

. . . slowly and surely builds her main character and sets the scene with excellent writing before king-hitting the reader with a stunning denouement . . . Louise Welsh writes a terrific book, and this is a thriller of a different order. Sunday Telegraph (Australia)

‘Welsh’s crisply written tartan noir tale explores how much damage one man’s obsession can cause.’
Weekend Press (Australia)

‘. . . who wouldn’t want to read about poetry, sex, murder and suicide?’
Grapeshot (Australia)

‘Louise’s books are gothic, dark, unexpected, thought-provoking and often emotional. And they are well worth reading.’
Austcrime (Australia)

‘Taut, witty and wonderfully plotted.’ Westweekend (Australia)

‘Finding Louise Welsh reminds me of the excitement I felt on first reading Ruth Rendell or PD James for here is an assured storyteller shot through with daring and originality.’ South Coast Register (Australia)



  

Naming The Bones
(Canongate Books Ltd, 4 Mar 2010) buy

Some Secrets are best left buried.

Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here? His quiet life in university libraries researching the lives of writers seems a world away, and yet it is because of the mysterious writer, Archie Lunan, dead for thirty years, that Murray now finds himself scrabbling in the dirt on the remote island of Lismore. Loaded with Welsh's trademark wit, insight and gothic charisma, this adventure novel weaves the lives of Murray and Archie together in a tale of literature, obsession and dark magic.


The genuinely literary crime novel is a rarity – too many are neither good crime or good literature – but Naming the Bones succeeds on both counts, and involves a meaty literary crime into the bargain . . . highly entertaining and satisfying as well.’
Joanna Hines, The Guardian(paperback edition)

Academic obsession turns dangerous in Louise Welsh's thriller, Naming the Bones the story of a man's pursuit of a mysterious poet. Welsh heaps the tension, chapter by chapter in this enthralling read.
Vogue

Her admirers will swoop, knowing what to expect. But they'll find that the familiar elements have been distilled and refined to an even purer essence of Louise Welsh-ness: gripping story, shrewd characterisation, humour, eroticism, the macabre, a spattering of gore. The narration is even better paced than previously.
Ronald Frame, Scottish Review of Books 
(scroll down the link above for the review)

A smart and horribly funny slice of campus gothic in the vein of Simon Gray's After Pilkington, this is Welsh's best novel since her 2002 hit The Cutting Room . . . Welsh augments her thriller plot with neat satire on academic life and pithy insights into the psychology of those writers who devote themselves to creating "paper facsimiles of lives hurtling towards death". Highly recommended.
The Guardian

Naming the Bones is much more than a Taggartian exercise in pub-spotting. It is the most rounded of Welsh’s books to date, fulfilling the huge promise of her earlier work, combining a whip-cracking plot with a literary touch that lifts her way above her genre colleagues.
Anna Burnside in The Times

. . . a hugely enjoyable literary thriller. While it is a more mainstream novel than Welsh’s acclaimed debut The Cutting Room, it still plays to the reader’s intelligence. Despite a gothic plot that flirts with – and occasionally gets into bed with – melodrama, the book never loses sight of its broader themes.
The Financial Times

A layered work which can be read on several levels Naming the Bones deserves more than one reading...
Rosemary Goring in The Herald

. . . a wonderfully engaging adventure . . . Full of Welsh’s gothic touches and dark humour, this is a thrilling delight from start to finish, the author combining a knack for storytelling with a feel for literary resonance – and doing it with great confidence.
The Big Issue

Welsh is adept at keeping you reading till the end.
The Daily Mail

This campus-novel-with-a-twist serves up a deliciously satisfying conclusion. 
Diva 
 
Description and characterisation are her strong suits. Even minor characters are drawn with such precision you half expect to meet them on the street.
Gillian Bowditch, Sunday Times, Ecosse

If you love curling up with an atmospheric thriller on a drizzly Sunday afternoon, this is the novel for you . . . Spellbinding!
Grazia

Welsh’s writing is assured, the characters are excellently drawn, the plot is well paced and you’ll want to keep turning the page.
Anne Sexton in Hot Press

Enjoyable and exciting
Times Literary Supplement

Unfolding like a sophisticated whodunit, full of her trademark dour wit, Welsh peels back the rarefied veneer of academic life to expose something rotten beneath.
The List

If her previous work suggested Welsh was an exciting voice for the here and now this latest novel stakes her claim to being one that will last for some considerable time to come.
Stirling Observer