Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All

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The basic premise is that Hitman Anders isn’t a very focused hitman, so Per and Johanna cook up a business where they market Anders’s services and manage the requests for retribution, while Hitman Anders fulfills the requests. 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. I’d not previously read any of Jonasson’s books, but as this was on offer on Kindle I thought I’d dive in. After a long career as a journalist, media consultant and television producer, Jonas Jonasson decided to start a new life.

Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own business, and preferably not get murdered. A story of God, organised crime and faith in which Hitman Anders, Sweden's most tattooed assassin finds God after meeting an atheist protestant priest and the receptionist of an hotel cum brothel. All in all, if you want to read a novel that doesn't take too much effort and, in a diverse way (considering the subject matter), does have a feel-good factor rather like watching a farce on television or in the theatre, then give this a go.In my defense, I got this for Christmas from my aunt who regularly gets me bestsellers thinking she can't go wrong there. Hitman Anders may not have lived up to the author’s previous books (and it was strange to preview it in March when Jonasson was otherwise a summer read for me. The Priest and The Receptionist will handle strategy and public relations, and coordinate Killer-Anders' "missions. On the dust-jacket of the novel, words such "outrageously zany", "many laughs", a "comic delight", and "feel-good" are applied to it.

There’s a switch-around for Part Two, in which Hitman Anders becomes more sympathetic, and Per less so.But, whilst Johanna and Per both crave material wealth as a substitute for emotionally nurturing parents, I’m damned if I can see what any character other than Johanna is meant to symbolise individually - and besides, that sounds a bit high-concept for a Jonasson novel.

If you get the chance, even if you get a copy from the library, I do recommend The 100 Year Old Man. Maybe some of the hilariousness was lost in translation and different nationalities often have different senses of humour.

Because unlike most book bloggers out there, I absolutely loved Jonas Jonasson's other novel The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared and I was hoping of having a similar experience with this new book.

Hitman Anders is fresh out of prison and trying to keep his head down when he meets a female Protestant vicar (who happens to be an atheist), and a receptionist at a 1-star hotel (who happens to be currently homeless).This book has a very similar humor as was in The Hundred Year Old Man, but somehow the scale of it is much smaller. I should have been warned sufficiently by the low Goodreads rating, but I thought this would be one of those unpopular opinion books. Initially unnoticed by them, Hitman Anders embarks on an existential crisis that plays out in early morning drinking and unreasonable violence towards inanimate objects. I really do enjoy this author's work and in particular really liked The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.