The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
It’s one of those sad things when you come to the end of a good series, and know there likely won’t be any more because the author has passed away.
There’s rumors of a 5th book on the laptop of the writer, held prisoner by the sort-of-wife as part of a custody battle with the rest of the family. A fifth book, because he skipped the fourth for some reason?
Mr. Larsson reputedly planned 10 books total, and it’s a loss he couldn’t make that happen. Lisbeth Salander is one of the most engaging characters I know of, fun like other almost superhuman, eccentric genius characters… Sherlock Holmes, The Doctor, and to some extent, Dr. House.
The three books are commendable in the way they weave a complex but believable plot, while producing some memorable scenes and characters. Larrson’s quirky (perhaps almost aspergerish?) tendency to provide copious detail about the technology in the story (down to the model numbers of cellphones used) was jarring at first, but later just became an unintentional running gag in my head.
This third book ties things up reasonably well for what was supposed to be a third of ten novel, so we’re not left hanging with anything more than “what would Lizbeth Salander get up to next?”
It seems a bit pointless to give a worldwide bestselling book a rave… but there are a lot of bestsellers out there that I’ve found essentially unreadable, especially in the thriller/mystery category (e.g. anything by Clive Cussler). So.. in essence, I’m saying this deserves to be a bestseller.
On a side note, this book is an example of why I shouldn’t have a Kindle. It was a classic example of my almost-worst-case scenario. I felt like reading it, it cost $13 as an eBook, I could have found it used for much less, but it’s So Easy to just buy it and read it right then. And thus I did.
At least it didn’t suck. That would have been the real worst-case.
