Communism’s fall created a vacuum spawning a new form of aggressive gangster Capitalism whose claws now reach to rip the breast of their ancestral homeland in the West. Against this backdrop Three Seconds exposes the fatal flaws in individual and institutional morality which lie beneath the cultured veneer of Western identity. Though Rosulnd and Hellstrom’s characterisation is immediately filmic - Gren’s internal dialogue evoking Harris’s Will Graham - this profoundly European read has enduring philosophical depth that resonates long after the heart's stopped racing at the brutal brilliance of the fiction. For those whose heroes should be humanly anti-hero aka Larsson’s Salender; come fall in love with Piet Hoffman. For those who intuit governmental conspiracy as human weakness and vanity writ large; welcome home.

'Three Seconds' - Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom are the Winners of the Swedish Crime Novel of the Year with this offering from the publishers of Steig Larsson. However, here the similarity with this book and the Dragon Tattoo trilogy ends. It takes quite a time to get into this bool, but as it covers over 500 pages, it is worth persevering. It is an unusual book insofar as at some points you just have to carry on reading and at others you feel the need to take a rest. Piet Hoffmann is the family man living a double life. Two children and a loving wife on one side and a life spent undercover working with part of the police force. Will he manage to keep both separate? Will he survive against the Polish mafia? On his side, he has the support of his police manager. However, this is very limited even though records can - and are - manipulated very well to maintain his Piet's cover. The ageing murder detective, Ewert Grens, knows nothing of the covert operation and doggedly pursues a killer. This puts Piet at greater risk. Overall, a very good read that makes you wonder why Swedish crime novels are only just making the mainstream here in the UK. Highly recommended.

This book was very good the only thing i would say is if you find the first chapter hard going PLEASE perserve it is definetley worth continuing. i think you would enjoy this book if you like crime novels the more you read the more gripping it becomes and it is definetloey a book i could not put down. i would very much read another novel by this author he was very desrciptive. as you read the book the story unfolds in different ways then expected! as you are reading you become very involved with the charcters and feel like you know the whole family involved and how they are feeling asthe author is so descriptive. i would definetley recommend this book. BRILLIANT READ!

Great Swedish crime writers seem like buses you wait for ages for one and then a load come together and Roslund and Hellstrom are up theree make no mistake. Three seconds is like a snowball rolling down a mountain picking up speed until it hurtles to its conclusion. A murder dectective, who grows on you in Ewert, who is stymied by his bosses but is determined but has his ghosts. An infiltrator who you can feel through the pages the intense pressure he is constantly under. Excellent read can't wait for their next one.

Any fan of quick, seemingly unrelated sequences segueing into one another rapidly will immediately feel at home with the first half of this thriller. For me, it picked up considerably during the second half when the loose ends start coming together satisfyingly, and this is where the action reads as well as scenes from a Die Hard movie. Empathising with Paula the double agent and Ewert Grens the weary detective was a little difficult for me, but in summary, a read that builds its thrills enough to keep the pages turning till the very end.