There are few writers who engage you from the first line. Boyos author, Richard Marinick, grips you even before his novel’s begun, with a startlingly honest introduction about his life and how he came to write this impressive, gripping debut novel. From any other writer, such an introduction may be superfluous; the sign of some over inflated ego, perhaps. But Marinick has something he needs to tell us; something that will explain the raw truth of the fiction that follows. Most writers do research, ride along with cops and talk to career criminals so they can get their writing just-so, layered with a degree of truth that sells it not only to the casual reader but to those who understand the world in which the writer places their work. Marinick didn’t need to do any of that. He’d already lived that life. A reformed recidivist (and believing – probably rightly so – that the system seems designed in a way that encourages recidivist behaviour) Marinick knows the world he’s writing about on a personal level. He’s been there, lived the lives of his protagonists. Along with that Pelecanos-like kick of cool he’s got to his writing, he possesses a raw honesty that adds another, harder-edged layer of believability to the whole affair.

Marinick is an incredibly gifted storyteller. Boyos sidles up like a good friend with one hell of a tale to tell. With characters that live and breathe beyond the page and a story that slides along so effortlessly you don’t need to think about how good the plot is; you just know it.

Jack “Wacko” Curran and his brother, Kevin, are Boston-based career criminals. They’re well-connected and they got some good shit going on, but they’re tired of kicking their end upstairs. So when they decide to take some action, maybe grab a little something that’s just for them, you know things aren’t going to be rosy for long.

Marinick’s Boyos are not merely slick creations, although on the surface their casually dropped dialogue and cool demeanour could have been handled badly by someone less adept that Marinick. These guys feel real from the get-go. They talk the talk and walk the walk but this isn’t some Ocean’s Twelve empty posturing; these are real guys with real flair. And beneath the flair, as with every good character, there beats a heart they’d rather not let people see. His characters – Jack and Kevin especially – exist on several levels which means that they ain’t just bad guys but perversely sympathetic anti-heroes. We may not like them but we understand them, even find ourselves going along with their dark lines of reason. Even if Marinick’s concern for the Boyos seems to sideline some of his female characters – who are still strong, just not so interestingly layered as the men – we come away feeling that we know these people. We’ve got a sense not just of who they are but how they see their world.

And the world of Boyos sure feels real. The Boston on display is the kind of place, even if you’ve never been, you’ll still feel like you know it. Marinick gives us the feel of the city, not just the names and the places, but the way they feel and the way they are.

The tone sits just right. Marinick can make you laugh in one sentence and cry in the next. In the world of the Boyos, you can be shooting the shit in some coffee house one moment and the next some guy’s coming down the street to blow your brains out. Its funny and its terrifying and above all, you never know what’s coming next. Marinick has you in his control from the first page, and it’s a combination of dialogue, pace and character that keeps you hooked if not as bad as Kevin to his cocaine then at least on a par.

The best kind of crime fiction is where you don’t even think about it being written, where random events come together to form an unpredictable whole. Boyos has that kind of natural quality. Everything that happens in the book stems from the characters and their interactions. There is only one force of action here; that of the characters themselves. And Marinick has enough faith to let them write their own plot instead of forcing one upon them. This doesn’t feel like a debut; it feels like the work of an author who knows what he wants to say and just how to say it.

Marinick says in his introduction he didn’t want to write a crime book, that he felt maybe doing such a thing would bring him back to the man he used to be, the man who may or may not be reflected in certain aspects of the Boyos presented to the reader in his debut. But thank God he allowed his writing teachers to change his mind because Boyos is both a truthful work of fiction and a remarkably entertaining novel in its own right. Marinick says he’s at work on his next novel, and here at crimescenescotland, we’re more than eager to see what he has up his sleeve. Whatever it is, judging by Boyos, it’s going to be worth the wait.