Meantime: The gripping debut crime novel from Frankie Boyle

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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! 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. Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back. Kelly gave a mixed review, questioning why Boyle wrote a fiction book when he could have been "far more piercing and precise" in non-fiction and whether the characters are just "ventriloquist's puppets" for Boyle's thoughts. Of course they want everyone to stick to the rules of civility, because those rules stop people from asking them why they have all the fucking stuff.

You Have Been Watching, Never Mind the Buzzcocks (as guest host and team captain when Phill Jupitus was unavailable for recording), and Argumental, as well as writing for Jimmy Carr's Distraction and Sean Lock's TV Heaven, Telly Hell. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.When Valium addict Felix McAveety's best friend Marina is found murdered in the local park, he goes looking for answers to questions that he quickly forgets.

It’s VERY political, extremely satirical and I’m not sure if it’s all just Frankie Boyle writing a massive Parody of life today. He said of writing, in comparison to stand-up comedy, that "you don't have to go and sell it to people". This is fun to read and the plot does engage with you from the get go, but as you expect the characters just jump out from the pages. I loved Felix’s interactions with the suspects as well as those close to him that he would come to find he couldn’t trust completely either. Docherty – an activist who Felix remembers from his bizarre scripts that he pitched to BBC Scotland.

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. But towards the end, after highlighting my 36th brilliant gag, the writing suddenly turned poignant and heart-breaking and I added another star to my appraisal. May, Marina's flatmate, tells Felix of her controlling relationship with Malcolm, a Large Hadron Collider conspiracy theorist. There’s plenty of laughs, emotional depth and a tear jerking section that backs right in to life affirming.

I thoroughly enjoyed this slightly surreal and complicated thriller, where everything is viewed through the prism of which ever drugs our protagonist Felix happens to have ingested at any particular time.I saw a lot of other reviews finding the constant drug taking to be boring or inconsequential to the story but I believe this is justified later as a comment on self-medication. He is later released and with the help of his Watson, Donnie, his downstairs neighbour undertake an investigation of their own. Though he had written non-fiction before, Meantime was Boyle's first novel; he wrote parts of the novel in hotels after stand-up performances and while wandering his hometown Glasgow. His conversations with celebrity author Jane Pickford contained some of the most naturally flowing dialogue I’ve read in a while and his balls-to-the-wall interaction with his hyperactive downstairs neighbor Donnie had me in tears from laughing. If you know the city, especially the west end, you will recognise the settings for much of the action.

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. He joked that he was "very keen on not going mad during a lockdown, and writing the book really helped with that"; Laura Wilson of The Guardian noted a proliferation of crime fiction by male celebrities written during COVID-19 lockdowns. Windows users should also consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, or switching to Firefox or Chrome.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. I consider Meantime to be a GOOD 4 star read, it is NOT a regular crime/mystery/thriller but a witty, intelligent and thought provoking modern read for people who appreciate satire, like myself. 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.