A comedy of errors is the best way to describe this book. The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules is the first book in The League of Pensioners by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg. It opens on Martha, an elderly lady who is approaching eighty years and lives in a retirement facility called Diamond House with her four close friends, Christina, Anna-Greta, Rake, and Brains. When the new management starts cutting corners Diamond House is no longer a pleasant place to live. After watching a documentary about life in prison these five oldsters decide that prison life seems more pleasant than life in Diamond House. As such they decide to try and find a way to live in prison, however their only option to do so seems to be to become criminals and then get caught. After literally escaping Diamond House they rent a room in a high end hotel in Amsterdam where they make plans to steal from the other residents. When this doesn’t work out quite the way they planned they decide to try their hands at kidnapping instead which leads to the comedy of errors I mentioned previously. The kidnapping is them stealing two paintings from the museum across the street from the hotel but due to this being their first major crime nothing goes as planned. Though it does end up being a supposedly unsolvable crime according to local police.
I picked this book out mostly because of the concept. Who comes up with the idea of a league of criminals who escaped from the retirement facility? However, I have to admit that using that idea as the basis for the main plot does shine a rather large light on what life is like in those types of facilities and how easy it is for older people to be taken advantage of. In large part because of this I am unsure if this book is meant to be a comedy or a social commentary. I think it is a mix but I am not sure what it was intended to be. The social commentary actually is about more than life in a retirement facility though as it also discusses how society in general views people of that age range. One of the things the characters repeatedly take advantage of is how people tend to ignore things like older people using a walker or something similar. Essentially, how easy it is for them to be overlooked or ignored when something happens. This is something that we tend to not think about but something that this group has obviously decided to use to their advantage. I also mentioned that the book was a comedy though and in many ways it really was. Primarily because this group of criminals had no idea what they were doing and had to continually improvise their plans when things went wrong. At the same time it was funny because nobody took them seriously, even when they tried to confess or take the credit. No one believed they were capable of doing anything remotely like that. I found it rather hilarious to read about how they were running around and causing mayhem, so to speak, and yet no one wanted to admit that they were behind it all. It was a great read and definitely deserves its 4.5 starts out of 5 stars.
This book is primarily a crime novel though one that focuses on the criminals instead of the detectives. It is also a comedy or satire so it would potentially hold appeal to readers who enjoy any of those genres or a combination of those genres. I know the book is primarily aimed at adults and I don’t dispute that age range. However, there is little content that would make it unsuitable for younger readers. There is extremely little violence and little or none extremely mature content. In fact, there are few mature references if you keep in mind that the characters are around eighty years old. I would feel perfectly comfortable recommending this book to older teenagers. As I pointed out earlier this book is also a social commentary about the way society views and treats elderly people so I would also recommend that the general public consider reading this book in order to really think about that topic as it is one that is rather important, all things considered. If you decide to try this book out feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.