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Another great book from Jonas Jonasson, I’m a big fan!

It took me a while to get into this time – he does seem to have a habit of giving each character a very full and detailed back story, each of which are entertaining, but it can feel a bit jumping all over the place early on in the book as we meet everyone in turn, but once the main story got going it was great fun as per usual.

An estranged (without knowing it) son and an ex-wife of the same man, and seeking revenge, stumble across a business which sets out to do exactly that for people. Chaos ensues, there’s not much more to say without giving the fun away!

Some out of context quotes to give a feel for it:

• “Murder was out of the question. But what if the boy died anyway? That would be a different story. The problem was that eighteen-year-old boys don’t just do that out of the blue. He would need some help along the way.”
• “For years she had been certain that she wasn’t like other people, and that she therefore must be content with the small things in life. Now she lived with a person her own age who wasn’t like other people either; the two of them were more like each other.”
• “She launched into a lecture, saying that some evidence indicated that Jesus would have voted no to Rohypnol and everything else, but that this theory was primarily based upon Matthew’s testimony that one must turn the other cheek if someone slapped you on the right cheek. She made special note of the bit about the right cheek. This could be interpreted to mean that we should be forgiving only of those who are left-handed, and that was practically nobody. It was, after all, difficult to deal a blow to someone’s right cheek with one’s own right hand.”
• “His memory was all he could consult, and as everyone knew, that started to let you down once you were past thirty-five.”
• “One of the many things he’d observed up to this point on his journey was the small plastic cards. It was a form of payment, and yet it wasn’t. The buyer always seemed to keep the card, but the seller never got upset about it.”
• “No one was better than two Englishmen at becoming enemies over basically nothing. Over whose turn it was to use the dartboard at the pub. Over which football team one should support, actual quality notwithstanding. Two Brits couldn’t even agree on the simple question of whether or not they were part of Europe.”
• [On the arrival of electricity to a Kenyan village] “The only woman on the village council had argued for washing machines, stoves and water closets. When she added the future potential of Netflix, she got all the men except the chief on her side.”