Anxious people, by Fredrik Backman

From the author of A man called Ove, a new, quirky book.  Nothing is quite as it seems in this novel.  When a desperate bank robber attempts to stick up a local, cashless, bank, he escapes empty-handed across the street to an apartment building and into an unanticipated and unwanted hostage situation.  The apartment the robber flees into is full of people attending a realtor’s open house there.  Each person, however, has his or her own unusual reasons for being there, on New Year’s Eve day of all the unlikely times to show an apartment, which are gradually revealed.  The local policemen in this small town, are called in to hold the fort while officers more skilled in hostage negotiations travel from Stockholm.  The locals are a father and son, but the relationships between the hostages are also somewhat connected.  And then there’s that bridge…  Although the situations are funny and the dialog snappy, there is a core of sadness at the heart of the story, however, the author manages to give us hope at the end.  341 pp.