Lisbeth Salander is back!

by Shilesque

How can Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist be back?  After all, the author of the hugely successful ‘Girl with the dragon tattoo’ series died in 2004.  Well, the estate of Stieg Larsson commissioned acclaimed Swedish author and crime journalist David Lagercrantz to continue the Millennium series.  And boy, has he! 

Lagercrantz has absolutely nailed the characters – a seamless transition from the original author.  And dare I say it, better written.  Of course, that does make sense as Larsson was a first time author with ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ and  Lagercrantz has had more time to perfect the craft.  

In this novel, some time has passed and Lisbeth and Mikael have fallen out of touch.  Since her father’s death, Lisbeth has made it her mission to track down every last member of his criminal organisation to ensure that it is defunct.  But it seems it is not and has continued under the name Spider’s Web.  But with her father dead, who is running it?

Meanwhile, a world famous scientist has contacted Mikael. The scientist has made a breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence – a development that will allow machines to think and become more than humans could aspire to be, and is now afraid for his life.  This scientist has encountered Salander when previous research was hacked and stolen.  That link piques Mikael’s interest, and then, the scientist is murdered by none other than the Spider’s Web.  

The only witness is his young severely autistic son.  Lisbeth and Mikael join forces to protect the boy, solve the murder, and get to the heart of Spider’s Web.  All the while, the N.S.A of America is after Salander, because she hacked their supposedly unhackable system.

An excellent read, which has done complete justice to the prior books.  I hope that Lagercrantz continues on with the series, as I don’t want that to be my last experience with this fabulous duo!

Natalie