Set in Sweden in 1990, Henning Mankell’s first Kurt Wallander mystery begins with a dramatic, Raymond Chandler-esque scene. An elderly farmer from Lannarp, an “insignificant farming village” in southern Sweden, awakens at 4:45 a.m. with a sense of unease: “Something is different. Something has changed.” As the farmer gazes at the farm next door, he begins to notice a series of homely, seemingly insignificant details, and he and the reader slowly conclude that he is not overreacting in his growing alarm. Kurt Wallander, substituting for the absent police chief of Ystad, some distance away, answers the farmer’s panicked call for help and investigates the “methodical violence” of a bloody crime scene. The press quickly concludes that the crime may have been committed by foreigners. Public threats are made against the foreigners by extremists, and Wallander knows that “The [threats] had to be taken seriously. It is in the examination of these attitudes that this novel is different from the typical whodunit.
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is a fine conclusion to the Millenium Trilogy, tying up the loose ends that have carried over for three novels and kept viewers around the world panting for the next installment. Though the novel is complex, it is the best and most exciting of the three–and highly rewarding since it builds on all the action that has gone before, further developing the characters we have come to love. Lisbeth Salander, the focus of all three novels, is hospitalized and kept in isolation for virtually the entire six hundred pages here, but she is a looming presence throughout, and when it becomes clear that she will have to face trial for some of the murders in The Girl Who Played With Fire, Mikael Blomqvist, a mentor, finds a way to unleash her formidable, secret skills as a hacker. The final resolution is a bittersweet experience–hugely rewarding because the important issues are resolved, but immensely sad because there will be no more books in the series.
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Continuing the story of Lisbeth Salander which he began in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Swedish author Stieg Larsson creates a fascinating character study of a young woman with a terrible past, a young woman who also suffers from a form of autism. Salander, having worked with Mikael Blomqvist in the preceding novel, in which she used her formidable skills as a computer hacker to help him solve a major mystery, is on her own for most of this one. Blomqvist, in the meantime, has continued with his work running Millenium magazine, which has been working on an article about the sex trade, its connection with the drug trade, and the high-ranking police and political officials who are involved in it. When two of his investigators are murdered, Lisbeth becomes involved as a hacker to help solve these murders. She herself is wanted for murder.
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo begins with the arrival of Mikael Blomqvist on remote Hedeby Island. Blomqvist has been hired to do research for the biography of prominent Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger and his large family, and he is looking for a place to stay where he can avoid attention. Blomqvist, a financial journalist for Millenium magazine, is due to serve a three-month prison sentence soon for libeling a man he accused of criminal activity. The temporary job he accepts on this remote island involves the search for Harriet Vanger, Henrik’s niece who disappeared from the island when she was sixteen–thirty-seven years ago. Despite searches that continued for many years, no trace of her has ever been found. Hired to help Blomqvist in his research is an assistant, Lizbeth Salander, a disturbed young computer hacker who is under the guardianship of the state. The novel becomes an utterly compelling can’t-put-it-downer, as the reader “travels” with Blomqvist and Salander, sharing their frustrations and their physical danger as they investigate Harriet’s decades-old disappearance.
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