He introduced the world to a darkly funny and perverse band of Scottish heroin addicts in Trainspotting. He drew readers into the nightmarish landscape of his imagination within the psychedelic interior of his Acid House. Now, Irvine Welsh injects fans with another highly potent, mesmerizing dose of his unique take on the drug scene of Britain's underbelly in his latest creation, Ecstasy. In this book, Welsh turns his explosive wit and cynicism at "love" in the '90's.

Like the drug it is named for, Ecstasy deals with the extremes of passion, obsession and confusion. However, in this trilogy of tales, Welsh delves past drugs to explore addiction in a much broader sense - addiction to pleasure, addiction to pain, addiction to revenge. Each of the stories follows several hapless individuals on their own quests for ecstasy.

Clearly evident from his work in The Acid House, Welsh is a master of macabre short stories that would make Edgar Allen Poe proud. He continues in this tradition with his latest book. However, his quick-cut, music video-like style of storytelling necessitates the sacrifice of strong character development. Often his players are no more than one-sided stereotypes of dysfunction, rather than the fully drawn and fascinatingly complex Mark Renton that Welsh created in Trainspotting.

The first tale, "Lorraine goes to Livingston," traces the exploits of a diverse group of social deviants in typical Welsh style, complete with drug use, necrophilia and razor-sharp humor. He seamlessly melds the lives of a grossly overweight romance novelist, her philandering husband, a loveless nursing student and a talk show host with a morbid fascination.

In a complicated web of desire and deceit, these four become entangled in one another's lives. Although the revenge-driven plot follows a predictable path, the jagged style and colorful narration more than compensate for an unoriginal storyline. This portion of the book best showcases the wit and phrenetic pacing that make Welsh's books unique.

In "Fortune's Always Waiting: A Corporate Drug Romance," Welsh's horrifically humorous depictions of violence can only be compared to the hilarity of Quentin Tarantino's most savage scenes. This tale is not for the faint of heart or the queasy of stomach.

In this love story, a London soccer player on Ecstasy becomes so fascinated by a young woman that he gets entrenched in her twisted secret life. Along the way, the two wreak havoc on both the guilty and the innocent, driven by their hunger for revenge and adrenaline. The boys from Trainspotting even make a brief appearance, a special treat for die-hard Welsh fans.

"The Undefeated," the third in the chemically-soaked trilogy, tells the story of two people moving in opposite directions, who find love somewhere in the fog.

A bored, yuppie housewife discovers the magic of E, and decides to embark on a new life. She collides with a burnt-out junkie on his way out of the rave scene. Amazingly, they connect - or at least they think so. But Welsh leaves his audience wondering if people can find love through chemicals, or if love exists at all.

Although Ecstasy lacks the rapid-fire dialogue and crisp characterization of Trainspotting , Welsh takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through the wild terrain of love. He engulfs readers in the smoke and lights of England's rave scene, captures the ultimate rush of revenge, and chases that elusive object of human desire - ecstasy.

Irvine Welsh has become the voice of the disenfranchised youth of Britain. With his latest work, he moves on to become a modern-day love prophet, shedding light on the murky quest for ecstasy.