About.com Rating



Knopf, May 2010

Having completed The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, I was struck by conflicting emotions. There was joy because I had been able to read the best of the trilogy of Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels. There was sadness because it was the last and I would be able to learn no more about his striking characters. Even in this sadness, however, there remained a spark of potential because a partial manuscript remains.

Although it is bound to be tied up in legal issues for some time, one can only hope that it will eventually see the light of day and the lives of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander will continue.

After 1,531 pages spread over three novels, Blomkvist and Salander remain fascinating characters. Salander is a modern hero, a sheriff and avenging angel who rides into town on the power of the computer. Terribly abused as a child and constrained by the laws of Sweden as an adult, this seemingly frail woman fights back in the only way she knows. No one is better at using the computer to ferret information about nearly everything. Socially isolated, she has chosen to be herself, and that has stoked her conflict with the powers that be in Sweden.

When Salander learns a secret about her father, a LeCarré-worthy mystery is set into motion. Combine that with Blomkvist's continuing effort to find the truth and the reader has a thriller with more twists and turns than a Jeffrey Deaver novel. One can read this novel and appreciate the complexity of its plot lines and the relationships among the myriad characters; however, it is far better to read the trilogy in order: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

The second and third novels provide enough background information that the casual reader will be rewarded. Read them in order and the layers of complexity become richer in every way.

The first American printing of The Girl Who Played With Fire was 750,000 copies, an astounding number for any book, much less one whose primary interest came about in Europe. It is estimated that 3.5 million copies of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sold in Sweden, a country of about 9 million people. The first two novels have sold more than 4 million copies in the United States. Heightening awareness of the novel is the story behind its writing and the subsequent legal issues. Larsson, a journalist who seems to have modeled Blomkvist on his career and personality, suddenly wrote the three novels and planned for ten. Then, one day the elevator to his office was broken, and he had to walk up. The stress of the walk, his smoking, and general health caught up to him, and he died from a heart attack.

Larsson left behind his companion of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson. Because they were not married, she had no rights under Swedish law, and an extended legal battle with Larsson's father and brother continues to this day. Ironically, he had spoken to his publisher about writing a will, but the paperwork had not been completed. In a further note of irony, a prescient paragraph is buried in Hornet's Nest: "Blomkvist wrote a note on a yellow Post-it, reminding himself to discuss the rights to the book with Svensson's family….He had postponed the visit because he had had too much to do, but now it was time to take care of the matter." If only...

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is a gripping novel. While the reader may close the physical book, its characters will resonate long after. I want to read more. Therein lies another aspect of the legal facet. There are rumors that Gabrielsson actually contributed significantly to the trilogy. Some friends of Larsson and those who have read his journalistic work have called his professional writing so inferior to that in the trilogy that he could not possibly have written these novels. Although we are likely to never have the final answer to any of these questions, these issues will keep the novels alive in the publishing world and the money will continue to roll in.



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