Meantime

Reviews / Votes

A darkest noir, unputdownable crime novel that swerves and surprises, with a gut-punch ending. I loved it! * Denise Mina * A gloriously funny mystery that bucks the "cosy crime' trend" . . . Peppered with one-liners, it reads Raymond Chandler in Glasgow . . . Boyle regularly deploys the beautifully offbeat imagery that characterises the best of his stand-up * Daily Telegraph * Starts off the funniest noir - like a Glaswegian Big Lebowski - then takes you somewhere suddenly heartbreaking . . . A debut novel that makes me absolutely INSIST there is more to come * Marina Hyde * The gags are so good that the book doesn't outstay its welcome [...] anybody who loves jet-black humour is in for a treat * Daily Express * 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 * Part whodunnit, part social safari, part extended stand-up monologue . . . the novel is full of scintillating sentences and perfect lines of dialogue * Sunday Times * An enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir . . . Imagine Withnail and I stumbling into a Bond movie co-written by William McIlvanney and Mick Herron . . . [A] deft, engaging thriller * Observer * A surprisingly moving and beautiful journey through one man's sh*tshow of a friend's death/hangover * Lucy Prebble, screenwriter for Succession * A fine slice of contemporary noir, full of acute insight into the way we live now -- John Williams * Mail on Sunday * Just finished this and f*ck me, it's total class!! I'm sure all the expletive swears are coming out for this one - and so they should. Ace -- Helen Stanton, Forum Books Meantime is a tremendous book: a detective story full of twists and turns that is as beautifully written as it is darkly comic. . . Not surprisingly, Meantime is very, very funny. But it is also a gripping work of stylised crime fiction that marks, I suspect, a new and exciting chapter in Boyle's multi-faceted career -- Matthew D'ancona * Tortoise * Remarkably moving * Scotsman * A sharply written, memorable read * Scottish Field * Meantime flies along, filled with laughs and moments that pull you up sharp * Sun (Scotland) * Boyle's key strength is in creating such a believable milieu, even when events are exaggerated, underpinned but never derailed by a tongue-in-cheek humour * Chortle * Frankie Boyle's fiction debut is genuinely engrossing * Independent * It's both funny and moving * Guardian * [Frankie Boyle] has graduated into an extremely fine author with his first novel . . . The book lays bare the various worlds of Glasgow . . . and it slowly becomes that awful word, unputdownable, as the fascinating mixture of violence, drugs and unexpected humour surround the reader * On Yorkshire Magazine * Boyle's darkly comic debut unfolds amid vivid scenes of the seamy Glasgow underworld, its hard-bitten humour offset by an unexpectedly tender conclusion * Daily Mail * Word-perfect dialogue and wild imagination * Strathspey & Badenoch Herald *