I found myself more interested in the occasional glimpses it gave of Swedish life than the hi-jinks of our criminal trio. My wish for them to stop it without being punished too much was almost satisfied, though I still felt there was something missing. Umorul este bun, dialogurile savuroase, iar povestea atât de absurda încât nu îți vine să crezi și totuși parca este o radiografie a societății în care trăim.

This book has a very similar humor as was in The Hundred Year Old Man, but somehow the scale of it is much smaller.

It’s left me (and I daresay publishers) wondering whether Jonasson is ever going to produce another The Hundred-Year Old Man ever again, or change direction, or if this is pretty much it - but the narrative still kept me interested in what would happen to the characters, and aside from a few moments of cringing, it was relaxing and escapist, which is, after all, the purpose of books like this one. Conniving, imaginative, quick-witted and vindictive, the priest is easily the most fascinating and enjoyable of the trio - with the Hitman a simple foil, and the receptionist an out-of-his-depth sidekick for the bulk of the story - but this is nevertheless an ensemble piece: the very traits that make the priest the stand-out, and most proactive character of the group are also what make her incapable of coping on her own. On his lunch break one day, he encounters a grubby, but very hungry priest who, despite her utter disgust with God and religion, tries to sell him a prayer. This dearth of story development, coupled with characters who - while initially pleasingly odd - aren't particularly loveable or even interesting, meant the story failed to grip me. The book also contains Swedish politics which I found at times Boring and unnecessary and detracts from the storyline.

This episode is at least mitigated by some entertaining supporting characters who are themselves no saints.This dearth of story development, coupled with characters who – while initially pleasingly odd – aren’t particularly loveable or even interesting, meant the story failed to grip me. The three get together and put together a very unusual business plan that is supposed to make them all very rich. the orginal title of the book is Hitman Anders and His Friends, but I must say i like the translation title better, and i like the translation as much as i like Johansson's way of narrating everything, it is so objectively subjective, so pleasantly familiar ans surprising, so overwhelmingly simple, and so elaborately complicated. I thought it was an inventive piece of fiction that had some nice moments of comedy and an affectionate warmth running through it. It may not win the author many new fans, but has enough of the formula to satisfy those who really liked both his earlier novels.

Among the early signs was Per describing Johanna as the strangest woman he’d ever met: a way of saying to the reader, “No, it’s not just you”. On the dust-jacket of the novel, words such "outrageously zany", "many laughs", a "comic delight", and "feel-good" are applied to it. He gave it to me and two days later there was a family member of his over whose birthday we’d forgotten (meaning my husband really, I didn’t know them that well) and he pried the book away from me, wrapped it, apologised, told me I could ask for a loan of it, apologised again and then gave it away. This was a free advance copy received in exchange for an honest review, via Netgalley and the publisher, Fourth Estate (HarperCollins UK).I don’t think I couldn't make sense of her just because she’s so far from the modern CofE type, like the lead character in Rev (who’s also similar to a couple of friends of friends who had thought of becoming clergy, though they also had a quietly donnish side). A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook).