The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo introduced mysteries which The Girl Who Played with Fire probed but did not solve. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest unravels and lays bare the mystery at the heart of Lisbeth Salander, drawing the curtain on a literary performance that both charmed the world of crime fiction and saw Scandinavia perched at the zenith of the genre.
The best wine was kept to the last but even its fine maturation did not lessen the bitter taste of deflation that arrives on cue when time is called on the pleasurable; that there would be no more to flow from the pen of this literary great who sadly died while climbing stairs to his office before his work began its irreversible climb to the pinncale of print. My sister said she procrastinated on reading the last 100 pages of this book because she wanted to keep the denouement at bay a little longer, stretch it out into the indefinable future, the comfort of knowing it was there the recompense for not concluding. Fortunately, the night is still young when it comes to Scandinavian crime fiction so when one door closes another opens.
The terrain mapped out by Larsson in Hornet's Nest is not the sort of battlefield favoured by Lisbeth Salander. In hospital and under armed guard, where she is being treated for serious injuries – nothing less than a bullet to the head which leaves her somewhat indisposed to the fleetness of foot necessary for a rapid exit. To make matters worse the man responsible for shooting her is in a bed a few rooms up. Salander is wary of institutions of any sort, even those proclaiming a benign status. At the vulnerable age of 13 she had been committed to institutional care and knew exactly the rigours of that, being constantly monitored and scrutinised by that embodiment of untrusworthiness – authority. She had never been raped until she was placed in the ‘care’ of authority figures.
Her hospital tribulations are but the forerunner to a court trial she must face on three murder counts. Mikael Blomkvist and the resources of Millennium, the magazine he edits is, as ever, around to fight her corner. Blomqvist’s own sister has rendered her experience as a lawyer at the service of Salander’s defence. But they are up against some very formidable opposition that ranges from the Swedish criminal fraternity, Cold War figures from the world of Soviet espionage, and the Swedish secret police (Säpo). ‘The Section’ of the latter body does not want its secrets ever made known and is prepared to make people unknown to achieve that. People can die in hospital for reasons other than they were admitted, the necessary immunization against national security and raison d’etat not yet considered a profitable pharmaceutical enterprise. The Girl Trapped in the Killing Zone might easily have sufficed as an alternative title.
Salander is the character that the reader cannot escape becoming entranced by over the course of around the 1600 pages that span the three books. Readers might wonder whether her kind had ever been seen before. Resourceful, super-intelligent, computer genius, forensic, jealous, horny, violent, murderous, the evolutionary honed fighting machine that survived a lifetime of fighting the system and acquired the necessary survival skills to do so. Even though her presence is not as central to this book it is always about her whether she features in the pages or not. It is this darkly addictive creation that is the heartbeat of the Millennium trilogy. While Larsson weaves his way through characters and labyrinthine plots, and for long periods Salander does not walk across the stage, the thread that leads to her is never broken. The reader is simply not permitted to forget her, the magnetism of the character sees to that.
On finishing this book the deflation that seeps through the senses, an involuntary mark of respect for the dead author, simply has to be allowed to run its course. Had he survived the heart attack at 50, just months before the first of his trilogy hit the bookstores, Larsson would still be doing the lecture circuit and after dinner scene, holding court on this trilogy. It has been the booster for the unchallenged rise of Scandinavian crime fiction. His passing however only takes the tide of enjoyment derived from his creativity out for a short duration. The relentless artistry is irrepressible.
The reader walks away from this trilogy with a certain thought: Do not kick The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. She will simply hack you to pieces.
Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. Quercus: London. ISBN 9781849162746.
Love that book loved the trilogy and now there is a new author on the block who wants to continue where the Hornets nest ended-no easy task-but the last book left so much yet to tell-so many relatives of the heroine around the world-
ReplyDeleteMackers,
ReplyDeleteYou do this brilliantly you set the scene and then you invite everyone in.
It's nearly like sitting at the fireside waiting on the story to begin.
I had never heard about Stieg Larsson prior to reading about him on here.
Don't we all feel at times we've kicked at hornets nest or fell into one.
Great review of someone who sounds like a great author.
Couldnt put this mans books down a cara ,thanks for the recommendation,
ReplyDeleteNuala,
ReplyDeleteappreciated. Do you read novels?