Meantime: The gripping debut crime novel from Frankie Boyle

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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”. Their investigation sends them on a bewildering expedition that takes in Scottish radical politics, Artificial Intelligence, cults, secret agents, smugglers and vegan record shops. 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. 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’s route into crime fiction has been more circuitous but with a much shorter gestation. Having written a couple of memoirs, including the memorably titled My Shit Life So Far, he found himself experimenting with a narrator’s voice but not with the intention of developing it into a novel. Then he started looking at a detective format and decided he wanted to examine the “postcolonial thing in Glasgow”.

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 RankinHaving laughed an indecent amount during Lap of Honour, I feel compelled to restate the case for his defence, which is that Boyle valuably confronts us with our moral putrefaction, his darkness descriptive of our age’s turpitude. As his debut novel, the best-selling crime thriller Meantime confirms, he combines immaculate turns of phrase with the grubbiest trains of thought. His parents were Irish, he grew up in Glasgow; at his finest, you get a glimpse of Wilde, lying in the gutter at pub closing time. If someone decided to remake Trainspotting crossed with Columbo and it was co directed by the Coen Brothers and David Lynch then this is most likely what they would come up with. Although the central character of Felix acts as the narrator it is nigh on impossible to read his stream of consciousness and interior monologue without hearing the voice of Frankie Boyle in your head. There are quite frequent examples of industrial language, so if you find the use of profanities in your reading matter off-putting, then this is probably not the book for you. Against that there are some moments that are - perhaps somewhat surprisingly - quite poignant and there are also a number of sections that not only made me smile, but actually caused me to laugh audibly. An expected triumph in every sense of the word, go add Frankie Boyle to your Fringe watchlist. Twice.

Set in the aftermath of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Meantime is narrated by Felix McAveety, a Valium addict and aspiring writer whose best friend, Marina, is found murdered in a Glasgow park – news Felix first learns when he’s woken by police demanding a sperm sample. Finding himself a suspect, Felix and his overweight neighbour, Donnie, also partial to mind-altering substances, decide to undertake their own investigation: “We were the two people least suited to investigating anything, but with the right drug combinations we could be whoever we had to be.” An enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir . . . [A] deft, engaging thriller’ Observer 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. How do you solve a murder when you don’t have a clue? Frankie Boyle’s gripping crime debut novel, Meantime, is a hallucinogenic ride through Glasgow as one man seeks justice for his friend’s murder.

You know the type, where you look around making sure you’re okay with the fact that you and room full of people are laughing about Frankie’s planned assassination of The Queen.

And so begins a bonkers romp, drug fuelled and, on occasion very very funny. Which takes our MC pretty much everywhere someone like me wouldn't dare go. Culminating in an ending that defied everything that came before. Brilliant! In this light his tanned, bloated head looked not unlike a haunted paper bag, his glazed eyes fixed on some bleak internal horizon.” 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.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). 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. 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. Yeah,” says Mina, “but it’s brilliant because it does feel like a modern-day Chandler book. I nearly complimented you there,” she adds, fixing her piercing eyes on Boyle. “If we were on Scottish soil we’d be engaged.” Partners in crime: Boyle and Mina. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer