The girl who kicked the hornets' nest

Whilst collecting books for my soon to arrive Kindle, I read the electronic version of the above book, which is the third (and final) installment of the Millennium trilogy). I very much enjoyed this, so much so that I went back and reread the first two books. Doing so changed my mind about the series.

My review of the second book had left a slightly sour taste in my mind, and indeed this ends with the words: On the basis of GPF, I can't see myself reading the third part of the "Millenium trilogy", "The girl who kicked the hornets' nest". I would probably see any film made from these stories but I won't be investing any more money or time in these books. Well, there's nothing like consistency in personal decisions.

Again, as I wrote then, These pages give one the (post-reading) feeling that Larsson was making the whole thing up as he went along, and inserted events (or "hooks", as the musician or computer scientist might call them) as they occurred to him. If later events revolve around prior knowledge which is given by these hooks, then the reader feels satisfied, but if the hooks are left unresolved, then the feeling is awkward.

The third book resolved the hooks displayed in the second and so I finished the trilogy in a much better state of mind. Even so, my criticism of the series, that the books needed an editor, is still valid. The third book doesn't seem to suffer so much from this problem, but still there are paragraphs that could easily be excised. It is good that Larsson invents a back story for his characters, even the most fleeting, but most of this material should have remained as reference material for him and not placed in the books. I got the feeling that the entire series could be improved if one paragraph per page were removed.

After having completed the series, I began asking myself what it was all about. The second and third books seem closer to each other (the third is a direct continuation of the second) which deal with Lisbeth Salander's heritage and legal status. Viewed from this aspect, the first book seems strangely out of place - all the business about Harriet Vanger seems to be one giant red herring.

But bearing in mind that the book's original Swedish title was Men Who Hate Women, a different reading is possible. The Vanger story is also about two men who hate women and serves as a story within a story for getting Larsson's point across. The problem is that Larsson writes with a blunt sledge-hammer instead of a sharp lancet.

There are still issues which irk (aside from the writing style). Co-protagonist Mikael Blomkvist sleeps with virtually every female character in the books but no one has any problems with jealousy. Lisbeth Salander can break into any computer in the world and extract knowledge from them, but no one has a problem with this. She even manages to extract illegally a fortune from a corrupt financier in the first book (as we say in Hebrew, he who steals from a thief is protected from the law), but as only Blomkvist knows about this (or rather, he suspects this as he has no real proof), one can gloss over this. The moral of the story is not to save any document of importance on one's computer, or at least, computers which are connected to the Internet.

Maybe one shouldn't dig too deep.