“Her name is Lisbeth Salander. Sweden has got to know her through police reports and press releases and the headlines in the evening papers. She is twenty-seven years old and one metre fifty centimeters tall. She has been called a psychopath, a murderer, and a lesbian Satanist. There has been almost no limit to the fantasies that have been circulated about her. In this issue, Millennium will tell the story of how government officials conspired against Salander in order to protect a pathological murderer…”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (MAY 24, 2010)

The Girl Who Played with Fire ended with Mikael Blomkvist dialing for emergency help after he found a man with an axe in his head and fugitive-from-the-law Lisbeth Salander in extremely critical condition with a bullet lodged in hers. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest begins where Fire left off, and soon both Lisbeth and the man, Alexander Zalachenko, aka Karl Axel Bodin, are being airlifted to Sahlgrenska hospital. After undergoing operations, both patients are placed in the same critical care wing. Although the medical staff keeps them isolated, since they are mortal enemies, keeping them from attacking each other could be an impossibility if they wake up and manage to pull themselves out of bed. Meanwhile, Sweden’s law enforcers try to determine what charges should to be filed against each of them, but especially against multiple murder suspect Salander.

Meanwhile, Blomkvist, who used duct tape and clean sheets to keep Lisbeth’s blood inside her before the paramedics took over, isn’t allowed to see her. He has his own problems with the police. They want to know about the gun in his possession and about exactly what happened at Bodin’s Gosseberga farm. Mikael doesn’t have all the answers and even those he does have, he isn’t ready to fully disclose. In addition, he’s infuriated at the keystone cops who refused to heed his warning about the immense danger — even when trussed up — presented by the third person he — and Salander before him — encountered that night: the giant, Ronald Niedermann. And Blomkvist wants to get back to the offices of Millennium magazine so he can get on with his investigation into who masterminded more than two decades of cover-up that allowed Zalachenko to commit untold crimes and Lisbeth to be placed into a psychiatric facility and then declared mentally incompetent as an adult. The quote that introduced this review is lifted from his Word document; he is organizing the facts he has accumulated thus far. He’s kept so busy that he doesn’t even ask about how Lisbeth is doing for a while, and when he does think to ask, he feels his oversight wasn’t insensitivity, but a subconscious confidence in her will to survive: “It dawned on him that he had not been worried about her. He had assumed that she would survive. Any other outcome was unthinkable.”

And so, the reader immediately gets into the thick of things in the final volume of the late Stieg Larsson’s trilogy about the asocial girl with an eidetic mind (at least until her head wound), deep secrets that include her extraordinary computer hacker abilities and her burning, vigilante sense of justice. As in the previous books, quite a few epithets, some casual sex, lots of investigative journalism, and jags of violence and vengeance mark this novel. Alongside, it continues the unusual and winning liaison between Lisbeth Salander and “Kalle Bastard” Blomkvist. Endearingly and memorably, when one is in trouble, the other pulls out all the stops.

Broadly speaking, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo dealt with corporate greed and the violent secrets in the family of one of Sweden’s magnates. Then, Larsson turned to exposing the underbelly of the sex trade in Fire. Now, the subject is violation of Sweden’s constitution by a shadowy group. What can the media — to which Mikael Blomkvist belongs — do to uncover and expose the corruption and the illegal activities that have gone unchecked for so long? Can Blomkvist legally and ethically cooperate with the horde of legitimate authorities also suddenly launching criminal probes? Assuming his instincts are right and Salander does recover, can he find a way to communicate and work in tandem with her even if she is under arrest? And what can he do to help his sister defend Lisbeth in court if it comes to that?

In addition to the main story, this volume spools out a subplot about Erika Berger’s resignation from Millennium in order to become editor-in-chief at a major daily Swedish newspaper (in Fire, she had already begun thinking of making this transition). In her new job, she has to confront ethical questions about a story her old publication is investigating that might implicate someone with powerful ties to her new organization. And to top it off, she finds herself and others at the newspaper the targets of increasingly edgy and possibly dangerous harassment.

Although Blomkvist and Salander are by no means ignored in Hornet’s Nest, much of the novel is another procedural that courts tedium. The novel, slightly longer than the previous one, just suffers from too many cops from various agencies, too many prosecutors and other officials whose meticulously chronicled activities gum up the story. Arguably, the inevitable trial compensates for all that tedious groundwork, but Larsson also made what some readers will undoubtedly consider a mistake when he fairly thoroughly explained the plot’s major conspiracy early in the book from the viewpoint of one set of people and then used a large chunk of the remainder of the novel to show step-by-step how other characters unraveled that surreptitious set-up. The tale does perk up when certain characters connect and spark. But on the downside again, Blomkvist and Salander (necessarily) have very little face time together.

The idealistic activist Larsson used his characters as a platform to preach against the imperfections of Sweden’s systems of government, legal system, police, etc. I’m reminded of a somewhat similar subordination of character to message in the recently published “novel” entitled, Red to Black, by a journalist in Russia who employs the pseudonym Alex Dryden. However, Dryden fills his book with a great deal of allegedly true information about Putin and other power players in Russia and their purportedly conspiratorial activities. Dryden sometimes gets so carried away with background facts and figures that he neglects his featured couple. Larsson’s story is fiction, not lightly veneered nonfiction, although it does reference real people and actual historical occurrences from time to time. However, Larsson’s own experiences as a reporter and activist clearly served as a basis for Blomkvist’s activities as an investigative journalist and for fleshing out the rest of the detailed inquiries into who is doing what. Accordingly, Larsson’s novel has more of a nonfiction feel than it truly contains. That needn’t be a negative, except that Larsson ventured too far away from Blomkvist and Salander too often and allowed his penchant for adjunct characters and describing procedure to mar tight, more suspenseful plot structure.

In my review of Fire, I wondered whether the Salander/Blomkvist trilogy would conclude satisfactorily. I think it does. Many ongoing questions are resolved by the last page of Hornet’s Nest. There is closure of sorts — although, among a few ongoing issues: the whereabouts of Camilla, Lisbeth’s mysterious twin sister. Nevertheless, after I’d finished the last sentence, I couldn’t help wondering what Larsson might have presented to us had he lived and been able to write the ten books he apparently envisioned. An arc that only really began in this trilogy could have deepened and strengthened the bond between the taciturn woman who looks like a child and thought she was in love with Blomkvist and the journalist who, as his sister says, “…is completely irresponsible when it comes to relationships. He screws his way through life and doesn’t seem to grasp how much it can hurt those women who think of him as more than a casual affair.” I would have liked to have witnessed that Salander/Blomkvist evolution. But the series does rest here at a natural stopping place, and that creates decided contentment.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 889 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (May 25, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Stieg Larsson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Possible 4th novel?
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo The Girl Who Played with Fire

Bibliography:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005; September 2008 in US)
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006; July 2009 in US)
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007; May 2010 in US)

Movies from books:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008)

“Blomkvist saw Salander lash out with her fist. At the instant she struck her attacker she dropped to the ground and rolled beneath the car.

Seconds later Salander was up on the other side of the car, ready for fight or flight. She met the enemy’s gaze across the bonnet and decided on the latter option. Blood was pouring from his cheek. Before he even managed to focus on her she was away across Lundagatan, running toward Hogalid Church.

Blomkvist stood paralyzed, his mouth agape, when the attacker suddenly dashed after Salander. He looked like a tank chasing a toy car.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Kirstin Merrihew (JUL 27, 2009)

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second volume in the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, publisher Mikael Blomkvist and the police are conducting parallel investigations into three horrifying murders — and their initial evidence points straight at young computer genius and social misfit Lisbeth Salander. Kalle Bastard Blomkvist (as Salander has begun referring to him) hasn’t seen Salander in nearly two years, except for one night when he happened to witness a huge man attempting to kidnap her and both she and the attacker eluded him. He’s bewildered about why she cut him off cold, but had accepted her decision — until now. He doesn’t believe Salander killed these victims. Well, at least not two of them. He has to contact her, find out how she’s become embroiled in this, and help her. Salander, as usual, has her own ideas about who she’ll see and when….

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Larsson partnered Blomkvist and Salander as they unraveled a twisted tale of corporate greed, Fascist connections, and perverse sex and violence. Fire highlights another subject on which Larsson wanted to shine light, namely the underbelly of the sex trade, a swill of human misery being forcibly imposed for money and simple loathing of women. Blomkvist’s magazine, Millennium, plans an issue devoted to this subject and based on the interviews and reporting of a criminologist and a journalist. There follows much in-house discussion of the lurid material and how it should be presented to the public. But the three murders turn the magazine and its people on their heads.

Meanwhile, Salander travels and markedly changes in the early chapters of the 512-page book (in the American edition; it is a 569-page book in the British) that covers four months overall and is told in four parts. Among her pursuits: attempting to proof “Fermat’s Last Theorem” in a way Fermat himself might have done and keeping tabs on Bjurman (whom, recall, she memorably tattooed in Dragon). Then, she disappears for quite a spell as the murder investigation gets cranking. Later, she regains the spotlight as the book rushes headlong into a heart-stopping denouement.

The last book in this series — tentatively entitled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in its English translation — is not scheduled for release until 2010. However, the entire trilogy has already been published in Swedish (naturally), French, and German. Larsson reportedly had planned a ten-volume series. He had written part of the fourth book and had outlined volumes five, six, and seven. Sadly, due to his early death, only the trilogy is complete and only that, according to his father, will be published. After reading Fire, the thought creeps in that perhaps the trilogy will not provide closure, and that the reader could be left dangling, unsatisfied. That would be a crying shame because Salander and Blomkvist — along with other continuing characters — do burrow themselves deeply into the reader’s (at least this reader’s) affections. Fortunately, reviewers who have read, in the other aforementioned languages, the entire completed story arc, including the third novel, seem generally very satisfied. Some claim that the last book, also the longest, is a grand finale that answers all outstanding questions. A few are less effusive, stating that the last book can’t meet the anticipatory heights set by the stunning, unusual first one.

This last criticism can be applied to the second book as well. Fire does not pack quite the punch of uniqueness that Dragon did. One can perhaps think of the movie trilogy The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolution as an analogy. The smash introductory film awed with its mind-bending perspective. The second and third passes were very solid, even amazing, partners, but they only reiterated the cutting-edge magic so novel in The Matrix, building on it, not inventing something mind-blowingly fresh. Familiarity takes a bit of the bloom off the rose, but it certainly doesn’t breed contempt (to mix metaphors) in these instances. Larsson’s Fire lags a little during the mid-section in which criminal investigation procedure grinds along and the author belabors certain points, seeming to believe his readers novices at crime mysteries. But overall, Fire accelerates the enthralling story of Lisbeth and Mikael with panache. One can’t help thinking the world they inhabit is too slimy, too vicious, but Larsson was a man with many crusades and causes, and his trilogy vividly paints the harsh pictures of society that he hoped to reform. The Millennium Trilogy encompasses uncompromising social critique; prickling thrills; and curious, bittersweet romantic hints. Fire drew me like a moth, and I can’t wait to get my hands on Hornet.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 72 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (July 28, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AMAZON PAGE:	The Girl Who Played with Fire
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Stieg Larsson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Bibliography:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005; September 2008 in US)
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006; July 2009 in US)
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007; May 2010 in US)

Movies from books:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008)