The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A Lisbeth Salander Novel by David
Lagercrantz
The girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth Salander is back! Yes, the author of the amazingly popular
Millennium trilogy is deceased and this is not a posthumously published novel. None of Larsson’s notes that were the subject
of great debate in the media after his death were used by Lagercrantz to write
this novel. Lagercrantz took up the series and crafted a
story using threads from the original trilogy and I don’t think fans will be
disappointed. In fact I think they will
be pleasantly surprised.
A professor of computer science, seemingly close to creating an
intelligent artificial life form, is murdered and his autistic son is the only
witness. Mikael Blomkvist was on his way
to interview the professor and is swept into investigating a story involving
corporate espionage, gangsters, shady dealings and of course hacking. Needless to say our favorite hacker, Lisbeth
Salander, is also connected to the story and gets involved in a major way.
Lagercrantz is able to mimic Larsson’s style, there is a
convoluted plot with all these threads that eventually come together and have
Lisbeth at the core like two of the previous books, but he doesn’t have the
wordiness of Lisbeth’s creator. A lot
goes on, and there is a lot of detail, but I didn’t feel bogged down in the
details like I did in the last entry of the series. The book can be read as a standalone mystery,
but knowing the backstory brings a lot and it is a sure bet that there will be
another. Great choice on audio -- love hearing all the Swedish names!
