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. Meantime captures the banal and lively existence of being Glaswegian like a seesaw that drops you into oblivion. There are many downs, but it’s occasionally peppered with some good. 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. Felix McAveety’s life has always been the sad rendition of unrealised potential. The death of his friend, Marina, is the fuse to allow himself to care about something again. Warming to the theme of complex plotting, Mina then tells the famous story of Howard Hawks, the director of The Big Sleep, cabling Chandler to ask who killed one of the characters – a question that none of the film’s scriptwriters, including William Faulkner, could answer. Chandler couldn’t help either and Hawks eventually decided that strong character development was more important than narrative coherence.

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. 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. This was a funny wee detective story with a very absurd and unexpected protagonist. There’s lots of humour throughout, as you would expect from Frankie Boyle, but I enjoyed the layers of dark conspiracy that made up the mystery that Felix sets out to uncover.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 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. 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. 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.

It’s impossible to read this book without hearing Boyle in your head as the riffing narrator. The battery of searing one-liners is aimed at familiar Boyle targets: capitalists, smug liberals, censorious millennials and Scotland (“You’d never get a Scottish version of The Matrix, because anyone up here who was offered two pills would just gub both of them”). And he regularly deploys the beautifully offbeat imagery that characterises the best of his stand-up. On our penchant for military statues: “This was Britain, and if you killed enough foreigners they let you ride a metal horse into the future.” 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. There are quite frequent examples of industrial language, so if you find the use of profanities in your reading matter off-putting, then this is probably not the book for you. 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. I feel I want to read it again because I don’t really get who killed Marina and why. But at the same time I am not sure I care enough to bother. If it didn’t grip me the first time round, not sure I want to spend another 8 hours of my life reading it again Boyle’s route into crime fiction has been more circuitous but with a much shorter gestation. Having written a couple of memoirs, including the memorably titled My Shit Life So Far, he found himself experimenting with a narrator’s voice but not with the intention of developing it into a novel. Then he started looking at a detective format and decided he wanted to examine the “postcolonial thing in Glasgow”.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. Felix McAveety has heard that his ex girlfriend has been found murdered. Living in the lower part of Glasgow, Felix has known violence, but avoids it at all costs, and when he hears of Marina’s murder he decides, along with one of his nefarious friends, Donnie, to solve the murder himself. Never have I ever laughed this hard while reading a crime novel. With the novel’s protagonist Felix, Frankie has definitely injected him with much of his own sense of humor as well as his often fatalistic view of society. I don’t believe I’ve ever highlighted as many passages in one novel to send to friends than I have for this book. I’m very happy that my wife is also a fan of Boyle’s because I certainly said “Hey, can I read you this one part?” over and over again while reading next to her in bed.

Boyle is a longtime reader of crime fiction, citing Ellroy as one of his favourite authors. By contrast, Mina was not a particular fan of the genre before entering it, although she’d been thinking about writing a novel for the previous 12 years. “I thought it was like being a pop star,” she recalls, “an exciting idea, but how would you even go about that?” 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.It jumps about and trails away, in ebbs and flows, which keep you engaged without having to pay too much attention. I enjoyed the entire story and liked the characters of Felix, Jane, Donnie, and Amy very much. I wish we'd had a bit more information about Amy earlier on, though reading to the end revealed an important plot point as to why this couldn't happen. 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. There is another obvious draw of crime fiction: it sells. Its popular exponents sell a huge amount, but it’s a big, baggy category that necessarily contains James Ellroy and Agatha Christie, one moment unblinking visions of street life, the next decorous detection among the upper classes.

The book lays bare the various worlds of Glasgow as Felix and Donnie dig deep to find out who killed Marina, and it slowly becomes that awful word, unputdownable, as the fascinating mixture of violence, drugs and unexpected humour surround the reader. The personality of Felix is beautifully drawn by Boyle. He is very likeable, wishes he did not take the drugs, and cares for his friends, all of which have the reader rooting for him. Yeah,” says Mina, “but it’s brilliant because it does feel like a modern-day Chandler book. I nearly complimented you there,” she adds, fixing her piercing eyes on Boyle. “If we were on Scottish soil we’d be engaged.” Partners in crime: Boyle and Mina. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer 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 The mystery that underpins this crime novel is solid enough, but I can't help thinking that its role is secondary and it is essentially only a vehicle for the author to air his thoughts - both comedic and socio-political. In many respects "Meantime" does come across as one long Frankie Boyle stand-up routine. For that reason, I found that I had to break this down into digestible portions ... Listening to Frankie Boyle for an hour or so is fine, but a stand-up routine of six hours or more is probably a bit more than I could cope with in one hit.There are clear semi-autobiographical elements to this and it even gets a little meta at times. Immensely funny people tend to be immensely intelligent and Boyle is no exception, yes there are times when scenarios can have a slightly staged feel and some of his views feel almost crowbarred in, but then that’s what’s most writers do. And the results are more than worthwhile. But I think it’s the same in crime novels,” she carries on, “that the audience want to spend time in the company of that character.”