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.” 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? An enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir . . . [A] deft, engaging thriller’ Observer 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

Mina instantly warms to this theme, noting that Chandler had worked with Billy Wilder (they co-wrote Double Indemnity but didn’t like each other), who was writing what Mina calls “that kind of staccato dialogue”. She posits the theory that the novelist may have stolen the technique from the director-screenwriter. What emerges more than in his earlier shows is a sense of who Boyle is and what – aside from making us shudder – he stands for. Of course, the jokes are still nasty: the set opens in an arson-blaze of gags about paedophilia, as marathon man Jimmy Savile outruns his escaping prey, and cherubs evolve wings to slip the reach of lascivious priests. But the register changes when the routine graduates to pervy politicians. “They kill kids!”, bellows Boyle, for whom contested claims of Westminster child abuse pale next to the warmongering of which our political class seems not only unashamed, but proud. 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's another of those books that I would also pop into one of my favourite genres - that being bonkers. It is, and then some. Characters who are completely larger than life, lots of weird and wonderful shenanigans. And more drugs than the whole Trainspotting series - and that's just chapter one - no not really, but almost! And that is the ONLY comparison to make with Welsh's series. Anything else is an insult to both... Meantime is an unusual novel on many levels, and a triumph for Boyle, who proves he has more strings to his bow than probably anyone expected.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.” 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 have a suspicion that there will be a strong correlation between people's attitude towards Frankie Boyle in general and their opinion of this book. The author can be something of a Marmite character and I suspect readers may react in a similar way to this novel.

Some aspects made it hard to suspend disbelief. For example, the lead character feels the police are inept so he will investigate his friend’s murder himself. Not once did anyone say “I have already spoken with the police”. However inept, this was a murder investigation so you would think there might be more investigation happening by the police. In reality there would be Testing stuff. Walk-outs? There were a fair few but mainly, you sensed, because his audience drink hard without always considering bladder capacity. And bladders will be tested by involuntary guffaws, too – “I actually think Joe Biden has done pretty well for someone who doesn’t know he’s President” is at the lighter end of the spectrum, but it hits the spot even so. 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. 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?”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.

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. 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! I do think you should lose your audience if you’re doing anything worth a damn,” she replies. “Because the thing is, you fight to become a writer. And then you find you’re in a big corporate machine. And what they want you to do is write the same book over and over again. You will face this pressure, if you haven’t already. So if you look at the pattern of my career, it’s one for them, one for me. The way I used to work a bar.” Meantime by Frankie Boyle review – the comedian’s dark, funny Glasgow noir debut 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 city of Glasgow makes for an ideal landscape to set this bleak yet perversely refreshing and hugely enjoyable piece of work. This certainly put me in mind of a lot of Christopher Brookmyre’s better stuff, but whilst still retaining a distinctive Boyle signature, which gives it its own offbeat and delightful spark.

So far Boyle appears to have pleased the critics. The Observer reviewer, who happened to be Merritt, gave it a rave notice, calling it “enjoyably dark and entertaining”. The Daily Telegraph called the book “a gloriously funny treat of a novel”. How does it feel to get support from that quarter? “I’ll take it,” he says, although he admits that he hasn’t fully read the Telegraph review. “I don’t know that the paywall dropped long enough for me to finish it,” he quips. There are some great bits in towards the end but you've got to wade through quite a bit of unreliable drug-fuelled narration before that.

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. But you have communicated that way!” Mina interjects, not without cause. You find you’re in a big corporate machine. And what they want you to do is write the same book over and over again 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? 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.Writing a crime novel now appears to be a well-established rung on the career ladder of white male television entertainers, achieved with varying degrees of success and skill, so it’s a relief to find that Frankie Boyle’s first work of fiction is an enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir. It contains all the deft wordplay you’d expect of him, and a few well-aimed, drive-by satirical shots at political targets along the way. 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” 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).