Jonas Jonasson - Mördar-Anders och hans vänner (samt en och annan ovän)

This book was actually not something I would probably have looked into if it was not for the fact that Nathan Page (who plays Jack Robinson in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) posted a picture on Instagram saying he was reading it. I have to say it was actually pretty much of a fun read. I have not read anything of Jonas Jonasson before, but of course I have heard about him.

Mördar-Anders och hans vänner (samt en och annan ovän) is about Johan Andersson known to everyone as Mördar-Anders (Killer-Anders), Per Persson (a receptionist) and Johanna Kjellander (a priest). Johanna and Per use Mördar-Anders to trick money from other people in a couple of different ways and that is really the plot line. It does not seem to be interesting, but I was really surprised by how absurd and funny it was.

There were however two things that I thought about that can be far-fetched, but something I wanted to share with you any way. Both are connected to the title character's name, but in different ways.

The first is about the nickname Mördar-Anders. Many Swedes is probably familiar with the song with the same name by Swedish singer Cornelis Vreeswijk. It tells the story of a man kalled Mördar-Anders who is about to be executed. This leads to my second reference for this book and it also has to do with Mördar-Anders's name, but his real one: Johan Andersson.

Police photo of Johan Alfred Andersson Ander 1910

Johan Alfred Andersson Ander was a man who had some troubles keeping himself on the right side of the law at the beginning of the 20th century. On January 5th 1910 he murdered a girl named Victoria Hellsten with a steelyard balance while trying to rob the bank she worked at. For this he was convicted for murder and sentenced to death. This is actually what he is mostly famous for. He was the last person to be executed in Sweden. The Swedish king, Gustav V, was really against the death penalty but to calm public opinion he realised he needed to kill Ander. So Ander was killed at 8AM on 23 November 1910 in the prison yard at Långholmen in Stockholm. It was both the first and last time in the history of Sweden a guillotine was used. A fun little anecdote about the execution weapon is that no one in customs knew how to handle it, so it was imported as an agricultural implement.


The picture of Johan Alfred Andersson Ander was borrowed at Stockholmskällan