At the beginning of The History of Tom Jones, Henry Fielding’s narrator informs his reader that he will tell his tale as he sees fit. Any ‘pitiful’ critics should mind their own business: they are ‘not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction.’

It was always thus for book critics. They may have the capacity to criticise but unless they ‘produce the authority’ by way of a published work of their own, they will be regarded in some circles as intermeddlers. Aggrieved novelists who have levelled this charge at Leo Robson over the years in response to his measured takedowns – or merciless demolitions – of their books will be disappointed to learn that he has written his first novel. 

The Boys unfolds over the summer of 2012. Robson’s narrator and protagonist, Johnny Voghel, is thirty and going nowhere fast. His admin job at a small West Midlands university is unrewarding, he is mourning the death of his mother and his trial separation from girlfriend Chloe looks set to become