Title: Three Seconds
Authors: Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström
Publisher: SilverOak
Publication Date: January 4, 2011
Hardcover: 496 pages
ISBN: 978-1402785924
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
From the Publisher:
Dark, suspenseful, and more riveting than any thriller at the local cineplex, THREE SECONDS is the latest novel from best-selling Swedish duo Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström-heirs apparent to Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell as the masters of Scandinavian crime.
Piet Hoffman, a top secret operative for the Swedish police, is about to embark on his most dangerous assignment yet: after years spent infiltrating the Polish mafia, he’s become a key player in their attempt to take over amphetamine distribution inside Sweden’s prisons. To stop them from succeeding, he will have to go deep cover, posing as a prisoner inside the country’s most notorious jail.
But when a botched drug deal involving Hoffman results in a murder, the investigation is assigned to the brilliant but haunted Detective Inspector Ewert Grens–a man who never gives up until he’s cracked the case. Grens’s determination to find the killer not only threatens to expose Hoffman’s true identity-it may reveal even bigger crimes involving the highest levels of power. And there are people who will do anything to stop him from discovering the truth.
Winner of the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers’ 2009 award for Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, and a #1 bestseller there, THREE SECONDS captures a nefarious world of betrayal and violence, where a wise man trusts no one and even the most valuable agent can be “burned.”
My Review:
Positively electrifying, Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström is not the typical police procedural or thriller, but rather an intense and suspenseful labyrinth of good and evil and the lines that can all too easily blur. Roslund and Hellström open with drug mules smuggling amphetamines into Sweden via Poland and the reader is taken into the deep dark side of drug trafficking, infiltrators, undercover agents, ex-cons, and every stage of the country’s corrections department. The reader is quickly drawn deep into the Stockholm Police and Corrections facilities where the Polish mafia, Wojtek, is infiltrating the prisons with drugs and an undercover ex-con who is willing to put his life in the hands of his handler in order to bring down Wojtek. Three Seconds is told in many different voices primarily through the characters of Piet Hoffmann, Erik Wilson, and Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens. The characters are brilliantly created, rich in character and the reader is continually kept wondering who is caring for whom. Without any spoilers, and it is truly difficult to craft this review without any, the story includes a Detective who is also an informant handler, informants, and law enforcement personnel ranking from prison guards to the head of the Security Ministry, all claiming to be working toward the same goal. But what happens when the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing? Three Seconds jumps right into the storyline and contains enough twists, turns, red herrings, and double crosses that one loses count, culminating into an unexpected and heady ending. It is quite fair to say I did not want the book to end. I do not currently know if Roslund and Hellström have their other novels translated into English, regardless if in Swedish or English, I will be reading them. I cannot praise this book enough and without reservation recommend Three Seconds to all readers who like to stay up until the early hours of the morning reading.
Award-winning journalist Anders Roslund and ex-criminal Börge Hellström are Sweden’s most acclaimed fiction duo. In 2009, Three Seconds was awarded the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers’ Award for Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, previously won by both Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, and it was a top 10 best-seller in Sweden for eight months.
I received a complimentary ARC copy of Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström from FebruaryPartners to review. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.
I think this mystery sounds great. I’ll be on the lookout for it. Thanks for such a compelling review!!
It is indeed an non-stop action thriller and one that requires a fair bit of concentration and I am looking forward to their other works.
Sounds like something that I would enjoy. Hopefully it would be as good as Stieg Larsson’s trilogy.
I am a fan of Stieg Larsson’s Trilogy but I preferred Three Seconds. However, it is difficult to judge as the genres are different enough that an exact comparison cannot be made. I think more along the lines of Henning Mankell’s works, which are brilliant!
Boy, does that sound like a book you could get lost in, and I mean that in a good way!
Kathy, if you want a book to truly be lost in, this is the book. Time flew by, I lost a lot of sleep, but I could not set the book down. I had to know what was happening at all times. If you have read any of Mankell’s writing you may know what I am referring to. The authors were compared to Larsson, which is not quite fair, yet flattering as Larsson, Mankell, and Roslund and Hellström all three won the same award. Which is a long winded way of saying read the book.
Wow — this is a wonderful review and though I am not normally a reader of crime novels, etc, I think I’ll get this for my husband and then steal it from his nightstand
It is by far one of the best I have read in quite some time.
This sounds pretty awesome!!
I LOVED this book.
WOO – high action in this one!
It was great fun to read.