The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
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The third and final book of Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (well, I guess there are rumors that there was at least one more book in process at the time of his death) was clearly the best book in the great series. Larsson spent surprisingly little time bringing readers who skipped the first two books up to speed. He wove minimal background info into the story as he went along. The second and third books are really just one book with an almost arbitrary stopping point.
The story moved nicely, had plenty of twists and turns and never for a second let the reader forget that the underlying theme of the series was about the crappy treatment of woman and the loss of decent social fabric in Swedish society.
Lisbeth Salander, the book’s primary heroin, softens a little, but is still quite annoying, unreasonable and repetitive in her own antisocial way. Mikael Blomkvist, the hero of the series, demonstrates almost supernatural abilities in being able to predict virtually all possible outcomes for the actions of a large group of people while taking down a contract killer in a bar using his old Swedish Army skills. It’s all actually very enjoyable, even in its absurdity.
This is a suspense/murder mystery type book, although that’s imposing a classic catagorization on a very different book. There is mystery and murder for sure, but there’s so much more as well. Even though this is the best of the three books, I wouldn’t read it without hitting the other two first. It’s certainly one of the most unusual series’ I’ve ever read and totally worth it. Perfect beach reading. There’s still time if you’re a fast reader.
- Started reading:
- 17th August 2010
- Finished reading:
- 31st August 2010