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. It’s impossible to read this book without hearing Boyle in your head as the riffing narrator. The battery of searing one-liners is aimed at familiar Boyle targets: capitalists, smug liberals, censorious millennials and Scotland (“You’d never get a Scottish version of The Matrix, because anyone up here who was offered two pills would just gub both of them”). And he regularly deploys the beautifully offbeat imagery that characterises the best of his stand-up. On our penchant for military statues: “This was Britain, and if you killed enough foreigners they let you ride a metal horse into the future.” I think there's a crime story in this book - ok so there definitely is, but it's not really all that front and centre, there's so much more going on around and about it that it does, on occasion, get lost in the noise. So, if you are looking to read this as a pure crime book, you might be disappointed. 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?

That brings forth another volley of laughter from the comedian, and it strikes me, not for the first time, that it’s Mina who’s the more natural comic performer – no wonder she told that agent she did standup comedy. I almost gave up after a couple of hours. Obviously this book is heavy on drug taking and I found that got a bit tedious. Yes I know, not the author’s fault. The book cover has a psychedelic pill on it after all. Well there’s a slight overlap between that kind of writing and insult comedy,” he says. “Chandler and those kind of people would have been writing at the time of Groucho Marx.” There are clear semi-autobiographical elements to this and it even gets a little meta at times. Immensely funny people tend to be immensely intelligent and Boyle is no exception, yes there are times when scenarios can have a slightly staged feel and some of his views feel almost crowbarred in, but then that’s what’s most writers do. And the results are more than worthwhile.By now we’re all sweating like Edward G Robinson in Key Largo, and it’s time for the two crime novelists, veteran and novice, to prepare for their closeups. Mina says a young photographer recently took her photo and made her look like “a teabag that’s been left on the windowsill”, and with that memorable image she goes off to change. And my final comment which I think is quite key to the whole thing. It's a bit tongue in cheek and doesn't take itself that seriously - which, for me, made it all the more enjoyable and easy to read. I wonder if he has another book in the pipeline. I'd definitely be up for more of the same... There was notable resistance in small portions of the audience to come aboard with his brief discussions surrounding feminism and religion in what was otherwise a politics-heavy show, with one audience member being booted for interfering early in the set.

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). Boyle adopts the persona of a precious critic: “‘Should these sort of people be allowed to write books or should we kill them?’ But a bad book is not going to get published, anyway.” If you like Frankie Boyle you'll more than likely enjoy this. The jury is still out for me. I don't mind a bit of his endless simile style delivery but I do get bored of it after a while. Its almost done to death in the first third. A darkest noir, unputdownable crime novel that swerves and surprises, with a gut-punch ending. I loved it!’ Denise Mina, author of The Long Drop I'm not going to lie. I've been putting off writing this review. Not for any bad reason, I'm just not sure I know where to begin. This is perhaps the most unconventional crime thriller (?) I've read in quite some time. And that turns out to be a good thing. Kind of bonkers, often funny, sometimes expectedly poignant, this is a murder mystery investigation the like of which I have definitely not read before. When your lead character, and part time suspect, is a self confessed stoner, and the very varied group of friends who help him really aren't much better, you kind of get a hint of where this book is likely to lead. Or so you'd think. This is a Frankie Boyle novel. I guess conventional and expected are really the last things I should be looking for, right?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? A darkest noir, unputdownable crime novel that swerves and surprises, with a gut-punch ending. I loved it!’Denise Mina, author of The Long Drop I’m not going to lie. I’ve been putting off writing this review. Not for any bad reason, I’m just not sure I know where to begin. This is perhaps the most unconventional crime thriller (?) I’ve read in quite some time. And that turns out to be a good thing. Kind of bonkers, often funny, sometimes unexpectedly poignant, this is a murder mystery investigation the like of which I have definitely not read before. When your lead character, and part time suspect, is a self confessed stoner, and the very varied group of friends who help him really aren’t much better, you kind of get a hint of where this book is likely to lead. Or so you’d think. This is a Frankie Boyle novel. I guess conventional and expected are really the last things I should be looking for, right? 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.

I feel I want to read it again because I don’t really get who killed Marina and why. But at the same time I am not sure I care enough to bother. If it didn’t grip me the first time round, not sure I want to spend another 8 hours of my life reading it again Oh and remember who the author is before you make comment about the language. Informed choice and all that jazz... That said, it was all in context. Woody Allen had a similar realisation at the start of his career, Mina says, archly referring to the comedian-director as her “favourite guy”. “He used to do standup and just read the material he wrote for Sid Caesar, and then he realised that the audience don’t want that, they want someone that they want to spend time in the company of.” She stops herself suddenly, and looks at Boyle: “I’m explaining standup comedy to you.” Nevertheless, Frankie Boyle persevered with his typically abrasive style that shied away from no topic. 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.Felix, formerly a comedy writer at BBC Scotland (allowing Boyle to lob several satirical grenades at an organisation that has clearly done him some deep wrong), has become a drop-out following a life-changing disaster. When his best friend is murdered, however, he surprises himself by summoning the willpower to investigate, albeit ineptly. 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. There is another obvious draw of crime fiction: it sells. Its popular exponents sell a huge amount, but it’s a big, baggy category that necessarily contains James Ellroy and Agatha Christie, one moment unblinking visions of street life, the next decorous detection among the upper classes. Even now I'm finished I'm not entirely clear if Marina was murdered, who killed her or if Felix even unravelled it (it seemed much more likely to be the work of the ex-cop who seems ridiculously willing to help a man who can't keep his eyes open half the time. Frankie Boyle, mainly known for rude comedy and scabrous political satire, has graduated into an extremely fine author with his first novel, Meantime. It’s a tough offering, interwoven with his acute and distinctive style of in-your-face presentation.

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”Meantime captures the banal and lively existence of being Glaswegian like a seesaw that drops you into oblivion. There are many downs, but it’s occasionally peppered with some good. It holds a different kind of magic, one where the disappointment from the referendum eats at the shoes of people walking to work, hailing taxis, and people on serious comedowns in dingy wee flats that contain all the hope of a mouldy pizza sitting on the countertop. Felix McAveety’s life has always been the sad rendition of unrealised potential. The death of his friend, Marina, is the fuse to allow himself to care about something again. Mina has certainly managed to keep a large following of readers down the years. Boyle, who counts himself among that number, notes that there has been plenty of variation in her output. “There are a lot of different types of your novels,” he says. “There are ones that are more straightforward, and some that are more high concept, and others that feature a true crime element. Do they all have, for you, different readerships?” Felix McAveety has heard that his ex girlfriend has been found murdered. Living in the lower part of Glasgow, Felix has known violence, but avoids it at all costs, and when he hears of Marina’s murder he decides, along with one of his nefarious friends, Donnie, to solve the murder himself. The last 10 chapters were undoubtedly my favourite section of the book. Nevertheless, I felt that they were throwing plot twists quite fast and accelerating the story to a pace we'd not met before, almost as if there was a challenge to finish the book soon and squeeze it all in!