Source – review copy from Quercus .

Three seconds is the fifth novel by the Swedish crime writing partnership of  Anders Roslund ,a tv journalist who set up a well-known Swedish art show (culture news ) .His partner is Borge Hellstrom work with the Swedish drug rehabilitation services and found an organisation to help criminal back in to society .

The book centres on two main characters Piet Hoffmann ,a complex man a company owner ,happily married yet on the flip side he is police informant and  face of the polish mafia ,the other main character that appears mainly in second half of the book is Evert Grens a swedish police detective in his late fifties a troubled man from an incident in the past he is first introduce solving a murder in Stockholm .The men collide in a complex plan that involves Hoffman getting caught and sent to a maximum security prison  the most dangerous in Sweden ,there is a killing and Gren is sent to find the killer unaware of Hoffmann’s really purpose he is a there is a lot twists and turns to you reach the climax of the book .

He left Vasagatan and then got caught in a traffic Jam by Slussen .It was nearly five o’clock and he should have been at the kindergarten an hour ago .

Piet Hoffmann sat in the car and desperately tried to fend off the stress and heat and irritation caused by the afternoon traffic ,which he could do nothing about .Three lanes at a standstill as far down the tunnel as he could see .To combat this battle with the city ,he often though about the soft skin on Zofia’s face when he stroked it or Hugo eyes when he managed to cycle on his own ,or Ramus’s hair splashed with carrot soup .

Hoffmann in his normal life as a married man fetching his kids .

Now this won the Swedish crime novel of the year and is bound to be compared to Steig Larsson ,with the fact it is published by the same Publisher Quercus and one of its writers is a Journalist like Larsson ,But to compare them is doing this a disservice .Three seconds is a complex well researched novel it is like a snowman being built very slow it starts to roll out of control as it grows .The detail in the first few hundred pages serve well for the climax of the book  .Grens and Hoffmann  are well penned as characters .This novel is highly original I ve never read such a intriguing thriller .the translation is spot on by Kari Dickson A tutor in scandinvian language at Edinburgh university .


October 2010


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