Steig Larsson died before he had a chance to finish editing this third book in his series that began with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There are rumors to the effect that he had a vague outline for a total of ten books in the series, which will, regretfully, never come to fruition or at least not in the form he would have intended. This background is needed to a degree to approach that third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. It explains some of the issues with the book itself as well as the possibility that storylines that seem to appear here for no apparent reason might have been something that Larsson was setting up to use in a future book.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest begins virtually where The Girl Who Played With Fire ended. Lisbeth Salander is fighting for her life in the hospital. Her estranged father, murderer, and all-around criminal Alexander Zalachenko, lies nearby. Although the reader knows what’s going on, with the police and others it seems as if the two of them are just pointing fingers at each other and no one is quite sure who to believe. Some of the investigators seem to be leaning towards Lisbeth, that is until a secret organization within Sweden’s Secret Police Force steps in.
You see, Zalachenko, in addition to being a remorseless criminal, also happens to be a former Soviet spy who defected back in the 1970’s. This secret organization has done everything possible since then to protect him, including covering up the abuse he heaped on his family to the extent of keeping one of his children, Lisbeth, locked up in an asylum to stop her from talking.
Now all of the work by this core group for all these years is threatened and could take Sweden’s government down with it. From her hospital bed, Lisbeth is aided by various people, but it is Mikael Blomkvist, whom she has tried to distance herself from, that is her biggest champion, fighting to expose those who have subjected her to it. Between the two of them and others who join their fight, can they expose what has been going on for decades?
First, the problems I had with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. It’s long; really long. Sometimes it feels unnecessarily long. There’s an entire story involving Erika Berger, Blomkvist’s publisher at his magazine, Millennium, that felt like it was unnecessary and could have been jettisoned. That brings me back to the background of this novel, though, because my instinct is that Larsson was setting up something else in the future. Still, I wonder if he had lived to complete his editing if he would have cut this and more from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. His attention to detail can be overkill at times, although I didn’t find it quite as bad as the previous novel where I was often reading what amounted to shopping lists.
Larsson’s characters are excellent, with a great deal of depth. It seems like he introduces more new characters to the canvas in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest than in either of the two previous novels. This also added to the length but it also adds a lot to the enjoyment of the novel. His main characters remain interesting. Salander is doing most of her work from a hospital bed but still manages to be interesting and compelling. Blomkvist is running all around Sweden gathering evidence and forming alliances, potentially neglecting his magazine, and getting laid. He has the most action, but his cunning calculations also are something to be admired.
The story that unfolds is hard to believe in a way, but at the same time quite plausible. With all the conspiracy theories out there, this sort of builds on the idea of a renegade group within an organization that breaks rules as they see fit and deem necessary, then tries to cover themselves once their misdeeds threaten to break out. I found myself unwilling to put down The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest despite its length as I wanted to see what would finally happen, especially knowing Larsson never was able to finish the story. The ending does sound like a lead into another novel. By the time I was finished, I found myself sad that I wouldn’t be getting more from characters I had grown to enjoy quite a bit.
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Categories: Book Reviews
I also experienced a bit of grief when I learned this was the last book written by Stieg Larsson and thought it was the end of the Lisbeth Salander story. Fortunately, the publisher contracted another author, David Lagercrantz, who wrote three more books in the series. I’ve only read the first book penned by Lagercrantz, and thought it well-written and with solid continuity. There are, of course, little differences in some ways, but the cast of characters remains more or less the same. Lagercrantz called it quits after three books, and now another author, Karin Smirnoff, under contract to a new publishing house (they bought the rights), is working through the next trilogy, the first book published in English in 2023. Thanks to your post, I’m going to track down books 5 through 7 in the series and add them to my TBR pile.
I will have to add them as well. I didn’t want another experience like what they author’s family did with Gone With the Wind and the sequels that were written. Those just didn’t embody the original characters at all. Thanks for letting me know they are decent!
That is a great and very helpful review. Being from Sweden and from the same region as Stieg Larsson I should at least read the first one in the series but I have not gotten around to it.
You should. It’s a good series.