Book: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Next by Stieg Larsson
Krishna
This is the third and concluding book in the Millenium Trilogy written by Steig Larsson. The first two books (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire) have already been reviewed here before.
I have already discussed how the author meant this to be more than a Trilogy but published only the first three before he passed away in earlier reviews and so will not repeat them here. Let us focus on this book for this review.
This book has some things common with the earlier ones in that the book starts with a bang like the previous two but there are also differences. The first book stands alone as a story, and the second book, even though meant as a continuation of the first book also stands alone; even if the background from the first book will help add some colour to the story, you still can read it as a separate book and it will still work, including the ending.
That is not true of this book. The beginning exactly takes off where the previous book left off, in the fashion of the Lord of the Rings books, in that you will definitely need the contents in book two before you can appreciate what is going on.
Our star, Lisbeth Salander has been shot in the head and fighting for her life in a hospital. Blomkvist was the one who found her.
The police Paulsson who comes in to investigate is an idiot and arrests Blomkvist for possessing illegal weapons when he was trying to return the weapon found in the area to the police. He also lets the giant of a killer escape by sending just two policemen who are easily overpowered (one killed) when they untie the criminal and he escapes.
Lisbeth comes to in a hospital and finds that Zalachenko, her father who tried to murder her (again all of it is in book 2. See what I mean?) is not only alive but is in the same hospital.
Zalachenko of course wants Salander out of the picture. He even sneaks up to her room to make sure that she does not leave alive and the scene where she realizes that someone is lurking outside her room when she is lying there nearly completely helpless is tense.
In the meanwhile, the Section, the ultra secret, almost unconstitutional body that was set up to investigate superiors and created the Zala affair when he defected from the Soviet Union, realizes the threat to its existence by Zala, Salander and others, and hatches a plan to commit Lisbeth to an asylum, stop the detectives from pursuing the Salander affair, bury the secret report on her, and also silence Blomkvist.
In a parallel event, Erika announces her retirement to move to the big newspaper. This is a big blow to the Millenium press as it loses the glue and the star brain behind it.
The Section’s ex head, Gulberg, already over seventy and dying of cancer, decided to take out Zala and kill himself to save the Section. Giannini’s suitcase is robbed and the copy of the report from Blomkvist’s house is taken. Blomkvist realizes that everyone is bugged.
Meanwhile, Teleborian tries to steamroll his way to Lisbeth, only to be rebuffed by her current physician, Jonasson. Blomkvist, Armansky and Annika work to expose the conspiracy against Lisbeth. We learn that Blomkvist has a third copy of the report that he pretends does not exist to throw the organization off the track.
Now they all go on the offensive. The Prime Minister of Sweden knows about a secret organization that has done criminal activities and framed innocent people into sanatoriums and is supremely uncomfortable. They catch Teleborian meeting Jonas by just hacking into everyone’s computer!
Berger is harassed by a stalker and her personal and compromising pictures are stolen too.
Now a group starts investigating the Section and finds that the plan to plant narcotics in Blomkvist’s apartment and also assassinate him. Blomkvist and Erica narrowly escape being assassinated while the Central European killers are apprehended. Blomkvist plans a big expose on the third day of Salander’s trial.
The trial and especially Dr Teleborian’s testimony is amazing and fabulously told. Afterwards, I wondered why the story was still going on until she went to Zalachenko’s abandoned building. Of course. All loose ends have to be tied, right? Even that part is fantastic, the way she tackles the final menace.
Apologies for being cryptic about the end of the story but without giving critical twists away, I definitely cannot describe more of the exhilarating last part of the book. And this is definitely one of those books where giving away plot information will take away almost all the fun of reading the story.
An excellent read and definitely holds its own against the first two books in narration, plot twists and tension. . I would say a 8/10
– – Krishna