A Book A Week

"Personally, I've got this thing against men who harm children and women, and that makes me dangerous."

There's no denying the cultural and commercial success that Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy gained. Beginning with the stellar The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Larsson's series placed a spotlight upon violence against women and featured the game-changing protagonist and titular "girl" Lisbeth Salander. Tragically, at the time that the books were reaching their success, Larsson passed away, leaving plans for a fourth and fifth novel abandoned. After a much-publicized legal battle between Larsson's family and domestic partner, author David Lagercrantz has taken on the role of continuing the story of a character who re-defined a genre.

For the most part, Lagercrantz does an admiral job at faithfully honoring the world that Larsson depicted. The Girl in the Spider's Web begins with someone hacking into the US NSA mainframe and accessing files that could be detrimental to world security. We quickly learn that the someone in question is none other than the punk-goth hacker Lisbeth Salander. Who else could be responsible for such a high-scale and technically difficult hack?!

The novel also sees Mikael Blomkvist face the struggling print industry. As the lead reporter and co-owner of the Millennium Magazine, Blomkvist feels a personal responsibility to bring a high-profile piece of investigative journalism to help boost sales and notoriety. Leads have been thin, but Blomkvist is optimistic about his recent contact with a noted professor. The professor is renowned for his advancement of artificial intelligence and promises to give Blomkvist a scoop that could bring the entire industry to its knees. They just have to survive long enough to see the investigation to fruition.

True to form, The Girl in the Spider's Web offers a complex and darkly tinged plot full of cutting-edge technology, suspenseful twists and revelations, and the edgy characters we have come to expect. Like the previous novels, the novel takes a bit of time to establish the interwoven story elements, but it quickly kicks into action about 15% in. While Lagercrantz never pushes the characters to the shocking and graphic places that Larsson did, he still does a fine job at continuing their story. I was delighted to be able to read a continuation of both of them. The novel is definitely different from the trilogy that preceded it, but Lagercrantz hits enough of the established beats to satisfy readers of the earlier novels. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more about Salander and Blomkvist in the next novel.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.

(2018, 17)