In many ways, Henri is a stereotypical mathematician character. He prizes clarity, precision, and flawlessness. What he loves about the apartment complex where he lives is that it was designed to be completely practical, with no thought given to aesthetics, and he decorated his own apartment with a framed page of computations by Gauss. All of his thought processes are achieved by "calculations", whether he is deciding what to eat or how to escape from someone trying to kill him.

That is, all of his thought processes were based on mathematical computations...until he met Laura. Around her he suddenly loses the ability to perform calculations. Under her influence, he also finds himself staring at paintings for reasons he finds mysterious, since he continues looking at them after he has already gained all of the information he can process from them. Perhaps the best indication of his character is that "You make me want to live [my life] with less of a focus on probability and calculus" is one of the most romantic things he says to Laura.

It is precisely because this nerdy stereotype does not normally include violence or "street smarts" that it is funny when Henri is able to outsmart and even kill the seasoned criminals who are after him.

Although I read the 2021 English translation, this picaresque farce was originally published in Finland in 2020, and apparently is soon to be a movie.