Cute ( )

Adventure

This is about five elderly people living in a Swedish old folk’s home, or retirement home, as it’s translated as.

There are five of them – Martha, Christina, Anna-Greta, Rake and Brains.

Martha was seventy-nine. At school she had always protested against things she believed were unjust, and when a teacher she had fought against unreasonable regulations.

Christina was the youngest of them, only seventy-seven, a former milliner, who was used to a certain standard of food, and didn’t want to eat junk food.

She had dreamt of becoming a librarian and what she didn’t know abut the Swedish classics wasn’t worth knowing.

Anna-Greta was tall and slim and an assertive woman. She had worked in a bank.

She had made some smart investments so she was rich. At school she has always been top of the class in mathematics and could quickly do sums in her head.

Rake had been at sea in his youth but afterwards had trained as a gardener.

Brains was an inventor and used to have his own workshop. He also liked good food and was plump and cuddly. He was the solution-finder of the group. He thought that problems were there to be solved.

The five friends had moved into the same retirement home, Diamond House. They formed a choir group and also performed at hospitals and parish halls.

It used to be pleasant to live at the retirement home, but after a new owner had taken over, they no longer got good food, particularly, not enough fruit or vegetables. Previously they were allowed out at least an hour every day, but not any more.

The old folks were fed harmful pills every day which made them lethargic. But Martha saw to it that they threw out these pills instead of taking them, whereafter they all felt much better.

The villain of the piece was Nurse Barbara, who was in charge of the old people. It was she who fed them the pills.

Nurse Barbara was infatuated with the new owner of the home. Director Mattson, who had much power and was rich. He was married but this did not deter her and they soon entered into a relationship.

Nurse Barbara cut down on the pensioners’ food so they got only one square meal a day, and otherwise only sandwiches.

The home had a gym, but only for the staff. The five realized they needed to improve their physical condition, and since Martha had appropriated a master key and found out how to get into the gym, they went up there and trained at night when Nurse Barbara was out gallivanting with her boyfriend.

Martha had watched and recorded a TV documentary from a prison and saw that in the dining-room the prisoners could choose from fish, meat or vegetarian, and even have chips to go with it. And there was salad and fruit too.

She showed the recording to the others; they were incensed at the fact that the criminals were better off than they were.

The five decided to live a life of crime so they perhaps could end up in prison. Everything they stole would go to the Robbery Fund and they would dole it out to culture, care of the elderly and everything else that the state neglected.

They would call themselves The League of Pensioners.

They booked a room for themselves in a posh hotel, the Grand Hotel, the very swankiest hotel, in order to enjoy a bit of luxury.

The old people used Zimmer Frames, a term I had never encountered before, but I believe they resemble rollators.

The Zimmer Frames had baskets at the bottom where things could be placed.

Eventually, they visited the National Museum and managed to steal a couple of valuable paintings, a Renoir and a Monet, which they smuggled out in the baskets of the Zimmer Frames.

Nobody suspected that these frail old age pensioners, who could hardly walk on their own, were capable of carrying out such a bold robbery of such valuable paintings.

They themselves called the robbery “The Great Zimmer Frame Robbery”.

They received ten million kroner in ransom money. Many complications occurred, including losing some of the money and also losing one of the paintings.

Also, I don’t understand that they were able to use the money given that the serial numbers of the banknotes had been registered. Perhaps there was something I missed.

The police were dumbfounded as regards who had stolen the paintings. It was one of the biggest thefts in Swedish history.

At one point the old folks confessed to the crime but were not believed by the police!

I found this to be an amusing, easy-to-read story, and can recommend it to those who want a humorous light read, There is at least one other little old lady book by the author and I may well be getting hold of it later. ( )

I heard of this book from a friend, who posted a very negative review of it on her blog. Given my masochistic approach to books and the fact that the plot sounded like it could be really fun, I figured I should give it a try, that it might be fun even if it wasn't good.

No such luck.

First of all it's badly written. The author has absolutely no idea how to use paragraphs, and they can go on for pages with different actions and thoughts being mixed up in a way that just doesn't flow very well when you read it. Knowledge is usually imparted through dialogue, which is usually not a good idea unless maybe you're Dan Brown. And then there's the part where she tends to overinform us, the readers, of the plot, and repeat stuff that happened just a few pages earlier. It gets tiresome to get treated like you're an idiot by the author.

Secondly, while I don't mind a few improbable events in books, most of the plot in this one relies on everyone carrying around an idiot ball and letting the main characters get away with too much shit. Someone overlooking an incident once or twice and having that work out well for your characters is one thing, but when the entire plot hinges on the police not being able to do their job even when evidence is right in front of them? Then it's just annoying.

Thirdly, all of the characters are brutal stereotypes and that's just annoying as well.

Very disappointed in this book, even if the premise was kinda fun. It just took everything too far for me to enjoy it. ( )

Interesting premise, boring delivery. Can't really explain why. Had it's fun moments but overall it was tiring. ( )