Description from Amazon
It’s always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing.
When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in south Stockholm, it’s particularly
awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room
seven. Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own
business, and preferably not get murdered. Johanna Kjellander, temporarily
resident in room eight, is a priest without a vocation, and, as of last week,
without a parish. But right now she has two things at her disposal: an envelope
containing five thousand kronor, and an excellent idea . . .
Featuring one violent killer, two shrewd business brains and
many crates of Moldovan red wine, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All
is an outrageously zany story with as many laughs as Jonasson’s
multimillion-copy bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the
Window and Disappeared.
I had never read any of this author’s books but I was drawn
by the font and the colour of the cover (not the one pictured here) so I figured I’d give it a go.
According to other reviewers, this was not as good as the other books by the author,
and based on this book, I wouldn’t read the rest.
Granted, there were a couple of moments I did have a laugh
but I felt like I could have skipped over quite a bit. So in essence you have
the receptionist and the priest. They are referred to by those names more often
than not so I’ll leave them as such. The money destined for the hitman lands up
with the priest and she decides there is a better way of the hitman receiving
money and for her to skim as much as possible.
The hitman doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself
other than be in jail, so tends to do things to get himself incarcerated again
and again (but only in the maim not kill category). But now he has people after
him and the receptionist and priest decide that, to save themselves, they need
to work together and go into the world of marketing. After all, what better than
to advertise the services of a hitman on TV? This will control the mobsters and
hopefully bring in money, which they will handle (read into that take as much
as possible). (The authorities seem to have no issue with this?) Until… the
hitman discovers religion and decides that being a hitman is no longer for him.
The problem is that they have taken money for hits that he now will not do. So…
how do you use religion to make money? You start a church and ask for donations,
of course…
And the plot goes from there. Some funny moments – the
communion wine was quite something – but it fizzled out for me and I started
hurrying just to get it finished. Then, when it was done, I actually didn’t
even realise I’d read the last page as it was just over. Maybe it was the lost
in translation part. Maybe it was the interesting first idea that spiraled and
made the characters more and more silly as time/pages went on. Absurd or satire
I can laugh at. This just didn’t hold my interest enough for the characters or
the story. It feels like time taken from me I could have spent on other books.
This might appeal to some, but to me I was never invested enough…
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