Meantime: The gripping debut crime novel from Frankie Boyle

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I didn't really understand how it was solved and I'm not sure if I missed something or we're supposed to not get it. They broke up after Amy cheated on him, but a few months before the Alternative Independence event, they started having sex, pretending they were strangers in a one-night stand. 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. I can say without any doubt that I have never laughed so much in my life reading a book as I did during this, it got to the point where I was still laughing at something pages ago and then as I came across something else it just got silly and I was laughing so much that often I forgot what I was laughing at. An overweight middle-aged guy who is struggling with his divorce but who also appears to have no internal filter – “We were the two people least suited to investigating anything, but with the right drug combinations we could be whoever we had to be.

A lot of his descriptive writing is highly original but there are also some familiar references too, such as the difficulty in locating the toilets in a Wetherspoon's pub, which is a conundrum I'm sure we've all faced at some point.

Now if you've ever seen a Frankie Boyle routine or really listened to his very unique and colourful way of describing all manner of things, then you can probably already guess how the storytelling in this book is likely to go.

He said of writing, in comparison to stand-up comedy, that "you don't have to go and sell it to people". a political comedy book, Scotland's Jesus (2013); [4] and a political essay, The Future of British Politics (2020). Frankie Boyle’s first work of fiction is an enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir. 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.Enlisting the help of a retired Detective turned crime- novelist, Felix is determined to solve the mystery of Marina's murder, not trusting the police to get it right. First of all, and probably most importantly, it is extremely funny, not just in the jokes inserted which are very clearly Frankie Boyle jokes, regardless of which character they come from they all land in his voice, but there's other jokes that work in the format of a book that wouldn't work at all in stand up, so there's clearly a good amount of comedic writing talent here, not just an obvious comic talent. Reading the press reviews I got the impression the book would have a early Chris Brookmyre and Colin Bateman feel to it but even funnier as it was Boyle writings.

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. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). I like as well that he's not gone with a straight detective/crime type story, I don't know how well that would work with the comedy, but this book is extremely weird in how it flows, how it's structured, the events and characters. The evolution of the characters works wonderfully, especially Felix: piecing together his personal story is on a par with trying to solve the crime he's investigating.The story follows drug addict Felix McAveety's unfocused investigation into his friend Marina's death. When his best friend is murdered, however, he surprises himself by summoning the willpower to investigate, albeit ineptly. It is of course very funny, as I found Boyle's descriptions of places and in particular people, especially Donnie, to be hilarious. Reviewers found that the novel's plot was of secondary importance to its social and political commentary, including Scotland's role in colonialism and capitalism and the nature of Scottish identity.