Meantime: The gripping debut crime novel from Frankie Boyle

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Never have I ever laughed this hard while reading a crime novel. With the novel’s protagonist Felix, Frankie has definitely injected him with much of his own sense of humor as well as his often fatalistic view of society. I don’t believe I’ve ever highlighted as many passages in one novel to send to friends than I have for this book. I’m very happy that my wife is also a fan of Boyle’s because I certainly said “Hey, can I read you this one part?” over and over again while reading next to her in bed. The energy in the room itself was palpable before Frankie even walked on stage, and despite the reputation surrounding one of Scotland’s harshest comedians, he neither disappointed nor bowed to expectation.

It jumps about and trails away, in ebbs and flows, which keep you engaged without having to pay too much attention. I enjoyed the entire story and liked the characters of Felix, Jane, Donnie, and Amy very much. I wish we'd had a bit more information about Amy earlier on, though reading to the end revealed an important plot point as to why this couldn't happen. Boyle is a longtime reader of crime fiction, citing Ellroy as one of his favourite authors. By contrast, Mina was not a particular fan of the genre before entering it, although she’d been thinking about writing a novel for the previous 12 years. “I thought it was like being a pop star,” she recalls, “an exciting idea, but how would you even go about that?” Boyle has said that he was an alcoholic until he was 26, when he quit drinking, and he’s also spoken about using various drugs. He mentions that he wrote My Shit Life So Far on ecstasy. So what was the reason for making his narrator someone who is constantly under the influence of one drug or another?The story spins from Felix himself becoming a suspect, to him leading Donnie and himself into dire straits and real danger. This is in no way a comedy read, but throughout the book there are rare and clever inserts that will make the reader smile, or sometimes gasp, as the hapless pair, boosted up by regular top-ups of drugs, ply their way into the deepest parts of criminal Glasgow. The swearing is constant and not for the delicate reader, but the overpowering personalities of the would-be detectives make their language sound almost normal and thus surprisingly acceptable. “Fascinating mixture” Throw in a very poignant and touching ending and you will have a read like no other that will bring out all the emotions in you.

An enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir . . . [A] deft, engaging thriller’ ObserverNevertheless, Frankie Boyle persevered with his typically abrasive style that shied away from no topic. The comedian Frankie Boyle is the latest in a rash of television personalities trying their hand at crime fiction; but, as you might expect from somebody who titled one of his tours I Would Happily Punch Every One of You in the Face, Boyle is not joining his fellow celebs at the cosy end of the crime spectrum. There are no sleuthing pensioners or vicars here: our amateur detective/narrator is Felix McAveety, a Glaswegian junkie. Reads like a twisted Caledonian take on Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. Inherent vices and scalpel-sharp jokes vie with a very human concern for those least garlanded in the rat race of life' Ian Rankin The characters come to life with a clarity that is very solid and quite unusual, especially in a first novel, as they stand beside you as you are reading. All avid readers will know the joy of seeing them moulded in their mind as the clarity of the personalities slowly become clear and adds a great dimension to the story.

If this is Frankie having mellowed out, as he insists through the duration of his new Fringe show Lap Of Shame, I’d be terrified to have reviewed him earlier. The main twist was learning about Felix's history, and I wish we'd heard a bit more about this story, perhaps in conversation with Jane? I would have liked more time to learn about him and his past in depth. The same goes for Jane and Amy - I feel that their characters were rushed off the scene to wrap things up, and so this is why I'm giving 4 stars.A friend of Frankie Boyle’s, he tells us, stopped watching standup because it’s either “clever but not funny, or funny but not clever”. Boyle, of course, is an exception: his work makes you think, or has you marvelling at its merciless vision, even as it prompts laugh after appalled laugh. It also, these days, questions itself. As on his 2019 tour, the Glaswegian is still puzzling out the value of his nasty comedy in our ever-nastier world. Are necrophilia gags justifiable? Should he only tell jokes whose ethical intentions are clear? Either way the last third is much more coherent and funny but the first two thirds are reminiscent of others' work and I'd say both Burroughs and Hunter S Thompson did it better (or worse depending on your point of view). This is unlike any thriller you will ever read. The world that Boyle puts us in is both beautifully observed and at the same time exaggerated and otherworldly, bonkers is the right word. Populated with the weirdest and funniest characters you are ever likely to read. This is Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle's debut novel and being a fan of his brand of humour, I knew I just had to read this. It's a crime thriller but it very much reflects Boyle's previous tv and stand up work, in that it's not your conventional crime thriller. It's set in Glasgow just after the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014 and our protagonist Felix McAveety is unemployed, previously having worked at BBC Scotland and pretty much spends his time taking drugs, both the illegal and the prescription variety and washing them down with liberal doses of alcohol. His reasons for doing so are not initially apparent but are explained in a couple of harrowing chapters near the climax of the novel. Felix's best friend Marina is found murdered in a local park and initially Felix is deemed a prime suspect and is taken into custody but is soon released and suspecting Police incompetence and indifference, decides he'll investigate her death himself. He recruits his downstairs neighbour, Donnie, as his partner in crime, who unfortunately has an even greater appetite for illegal substances than Felix and they don't surprisingly get very far. Identifying the need for some 'professional' assistance, Felix manages to engage the services of Jan, an ex-Police Officer turned crime writer who is also fighting the battle against her terminal cancer diagnosis. Their investigation pits them up against a local crime lord, murderous political activists, a deranged stalker, a British Intelligence Officer and artificial intelligence, as they try to unravel a tangled web of drug dealing and corruption to identify Marina's killer. There are indeed many such digressions in Boyle’s book, which makes me think of something Mina once said in an interview. If you’ve got the attention of the reader with the whodunnit aspect of the plot, she said, “you can’t bore the tits off them with your view of the world”.