Meantime: The gripping debut crime novel from Frankie Boyle

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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. No,” he says, “because it was just like, what do I like to read? And maybe that’s part of this thing of not really needing to earn a living from it.” Giving his narrator a drug-fogged worldview is also in part a reaction to “this modern thing of people being incredibly emphatic. It partly comes from social media where everybody’s very polemical all the time, and I think it’s difficult to communicate that way.”

Nevertheless, Frankie Boyle persevered with his typically abrasive style that shied away from no topic. 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 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.

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! 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. Marina is dead, Felix is a suspect. But he also an addict - big time - and spends the majority of his life out of his head. So he could have done it, but he suspects not, he sort of has an alibi. He is our narrator and, as you can expect from a man of his "highs" the story is somewhat confusing in places. He also enlists several of his friends and associates to assist him in his endeavours to discover the real murderer as he believes that the Police don't really care. 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!

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”. 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. Mina suggests that hardboiled crime novelists are able to explore “working-class social history” in a way that isn’t dull or worthy but is instead propelled by a powerful imagination. 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.

Actually, it doesn’t get much worse than that. Threading through the set is palpable indignation – about working-class lives and appalling failures of the system: for instance, there’s a brutal rape joke that alludes to the Sarah Everard case, but the target is unequivocally the government and police. Few escape his contempt – be it high-profile Tories, Keir Starmer (“‘My dad was a tool-maker’ – of course he was, he made you”) or Nicola Sturgeon (“who can squint with her whole face”). He doesn’t spare himself – dismally dating at 49 and past his spunky prime, which he enlarges on in unprintable terms; equally unrepeatable are his barbs about Prince Andrew. 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.”

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? I can’t remember the last book I read where I laughed out loud so much, was fascinated by the odd and endearing characters and didn’t really mind what the plot was. 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

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. 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. Without spoiling too much, in the final few chapters of MEANTIME, Frankie writes about grief and regret in a way that absolutely crushed me. I had tears in my eyes on more than a few occasions. To have the ability to convey feelings the way he did either suggests maybe his own past trauma or an incredibly special talent to relate to that level of loss on that deep of a level. 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?