Saturday, April 23, 2016

The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning by Hallgrimur Helgason, 256 pp.

No, this is not a companion piece to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It is the tale of a hitman from Croatia with the nickname "Toxic". He is a professional with 66 successful hits to his, um...credit. When he accidentally kills the wrong man he is forced to flee the U.S. and murders a clergyman in an airport restroom to assume his identity and tickets to Iceland, not realizing the clergyman is a t.v. evangelist due to appear on Icelandic television. In Iceland he stays with a married couple who run a religious television network but when his identity is discovered ends up being tracked by the police and the mobsters who want him dead for the bad hit. During all this he realizes it's time to "retire" from the hired killer business and tries to begin a new life with the daughter of the the evangelist couple. Convoluted but entertaining. The Icelandic author chose to write this novel in English rather than his native tongue and have it translated. The latter method might have improved the flow and the dialogue.

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