Three Seconds

November 29, 2010
Ex-con Piet Hoffmann, who for the past nine years has led a double life as a family man and a police snitch infiltrating the Stockholm drug world, takes on his most dangerous assignment yet in Roslund and Hellström's thrilling follow-up to Box 21. Hoffmann must go undercover at Aspsås, a maximum security prison, and take control of the methamphetamine sales so the police can dismantle the spread of drugs from the inside out. The murder of a man during one of Hoffmann's preliminary meetings with the members of Wojtek, the local Polish mafia, threatens the entire plan and puts Det. Supt. Ewert Grens, the returning hero from Box, on the case. Once Hoffmann steps inside the prison walls all hell breaks loose, and he's forced to fend for himself when it appears that everyone on either side of the law wants him dead. The authors ratchet the suspense beautifully right up to the final, inevitable confrontation.

December 1, 2010

The shady dealings between the Swedish police and their deep-cover informants propel the latest thriller from the writing team of Roslund and Hellstrom (Box 21). Ex-con Piet Hoffman, now a "covert human intelligence source" for Stockholm City Police, is close to breaking up the Polish Mafia's attempt to control drug distribution in Sweden's prisons. When the operative is involved in a botched drug deal that leads to murder, investigating detective Ewert Grens inadvertently threatens to derail the mission. Afraid that Hoffman will disclose the government's illegal involvement in his assignment, his handlers blow his cover while he's trapped in a maximum-security lockup. With the police, Mafia, and prisoners all wanting him dead, Hoffman makes Grens an unwitting tool in his desperate plan for escape. VERDICT Readers who persevere through the glacial pace of the book's first third will be rewarded with a terrific, nail-biting climax that demonstrates why it won the prize for Sweden's best crime novel in 2009. Give this to Stieg Larsson fans and any reader fond of morally complex thrillers. [Silver Oak is the new fiction imprint of Sterling and Quercus.--Ed.]--Annabelle Mortensen, Skokie P.L., IL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2010
Piet Hoffman is a devoted husband and the father of two young sons. Hes also an ex-con who has been working undercover for the Stockholm police for nine years. Code named Paula, Piet has risen through the ranks of the Polish mafia and is chosen to lead the Poles effort to control the supply of amphetamines in Swedens prisons. To do that, Paula must get himself arrested and sent to a maximum security prison, wipe out the existing supplier, and keep himself alive until he has all the information needed for the police to move on the gang. Roslund, a former journalist, and Hellstrom, a former criminal, have concocted a brilliant thriller that posits a nearly literal invasion of Sweden by East European criminals allied with former state security agents. Combine that with a morally compromised police and Ministry of Justice effort to combat the invasion, and you have a genuine crisis. Piets growing fear of discovery or betrayal and his angst at his beloved wifes ignorance of his work ratchet up the storys tension page by page and make the novel extremely difficult to put down. Named the Swedish Crime Novel of the Year in 2009, Three Seconds puts Roslund and Hellstrom in the company of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. Crime fiction rarely gets as good as this.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)