A new Lisbeth Salander novel by a new author. Lisbeth has never been to let a wrong go unpunished so it's not a big surprise to learn that she is trying to track down what became of her father's "business ventures" after his death. What she has found is a lot of secrecy and cover-ups but most seem to have landed in the hands of "Thanos" so she does what she does best, starts hacking into every system that might give her information including the NSA. Meanwhile, there is a computer genius, Balder, who has returned home due to fears of his work being stolen and to care for his son. He recruits an incredible hacker to see if she can find out who has been getting their hands on his files. Blomkvist has been having a hard time finding a story that stirs him but when he gets a call telling him about Balder and his mysterious hacker, Blomkvist is all ears. He can't get over there fast enough when Balder returns his call in the middle of the night, all but promising him an exclusive story. Balder arrives just in time to get a glimpse of a man in shadows with a gun and to find out that Balder was just murdered. The only witness who may have seen the murderer's face, is Balder's extremely autistic son, August. Now the cases all converge as it was hacker's working for Thanos who stole Balder's work and then murdered him for his computer and now want to tie up loose ends by killing his son before he can find a way to identify them. Blomkvist and Salander have their work cut out for them trying to save the boy and unravel the identity of Thanos.
So apparently there is some controversy surrounding this book because I guess it's Stieg Larsson's family or girlfriend or someone says they didn't allow this book to be written or published. I'm not sure of the details and I didn't know any of it before I saw it at Costco, bought it, and was already more than halfway through reading it. I decided since I'd already bought it so someone was already getting paid for that, I was going to finish and give a review on the book itself not the controversy.
With that being said, I felt Mr. Lagercrantz did an admirable job getting the personalities of the characters into the book. I didn't at any time stop and think "Hey, so-and-so wouldn't act like that" so but there were times when I felt there was something slightly off about a reaction or the way something was said. The basic plot was good but it was very slow in the beginning and took a long time to really pull things together but once they did, it took off quickly. In all, I felt it was a good installment in the series and if things with the family are resolved, however that works out in Sweden and their judicial system concerning these things, I would happily read more by this author.
Page count: 400p/27,796p ytd/242,712p lifetime
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