The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning cover art

The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

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The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

By: Hallgrimur Helgason
Narrated by: Luke Daniels
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About this listen

With some 66 hits under his belt, Tomislav Bokšic, or Toxic, has a flawless record as hitman for the Croatian mafia in New York. That is, until he kills the wrong guy and is forced to flee the States, leaving behind the life he knows and loves. Suddenly, he finds himself on a plane hurtling toward Reykjavik disguised as American televangelist Father Friendly. With no means of escape from this island devoid of gun shops, this country with absolutely no tradition for contract killing, he is forced to come to terms with his bloody past and reevaluate his future, to tragicomic effect. Toxic paints Iceland as an icy netherworld where in spite of peaceful appearances danger lurks - in the guise of terrifying romantic overtures with tough-girl Gunholder, fear of being caught in his blasphemous deception, and the threat of punishment at the hands of Thordur... whose name seems to be pronounced “Torture.”

©2012 Hallgrimur Helgason (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc. Crime Fiction Thriller & Suspense Assassin Fiction Crime Exciting

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Critic reviews

"A sensational book. Hallgrimur Helgason's brain is like this amazing app that morphs the English language into gorgeously blunt new forms. It delivers surprise after surprise and makes you feel good about books again. I can't recommend it enough." (Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X)
"If you read this I predict [Helgason]’ll be in your mind to stay.” (DBC Pierre, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little)
“[Helgason is] uproarious, sharp, and outrageously funny.” ( Kirkus Reviews)
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Whimsical story where random completely unbelievable things happen randomly in real time, rivalled only by just as unbelievable anecdotes in form of memories from the past - which is supposedly there to add ”depth” (it doesn’t). The main character is a run if the mill average bland hitman (from the perspective of an author that ”knows” contract killers based on movies) who finds himself in need to lay low, accidentally travels to Iceland (where the author is from) and from that point it is a complete Iceland-masturbation which is super boring… In iceland women drive cars, in iceland there is no guns, in iceland people are blonde - it’s absolute brain rot. Island this, island that. I couldn’t stomach it

Iceland-masturbation

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The language is this book can be offensive, but as the main character is a hitman, in hiding in Iceland, after a job gone wrong, this is appropriate. The fact he rates every female character he encounters according to how many days it would take if they were alone before he would think about her (that way) was off-putting. Aside from this, Toxic has an amusing way of seeing the world, from a completely different perspective than the average reader. Seeing Iceland from his point of view is a revelation, and I'm not sure the tourist board would be altogether happy with Toxic's opinions.

I'm not sure about the accents employed by the narrator, but the nuances employed only add to the author's charaterisation. As the story progresses, one wonders where it will all end, but the desire to continue (regardless of whether you empathise with Toxic) is unavoidable. The humour is dark, almost black, but perfectly pitched. The only disappointment is the last few minutes; the ending. Even so, I'd recommend it to others.

Rude, Crude, and (Darkly) Funny

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A real dissapointing listen. big holes in the plot. Very obvious "bending" of circumstances to get the story out of a hole, and a very dissapoinitng ending, that seem to indicate the author just ran out of steam. A total waste of money! AVOID !

The narator was not a fault on this , He did his best with a bad book I think.

Very dissapointing

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best book on hitman life. lol. it was funny as hell. and touching. would read again.

best

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