The Girl In The Spider's Web

Readers who loved Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series, with its memorable duo Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, will be happy to discover that, despite Larsson's fatal heart attack at age 50, Blomkvist and Salander are back in business. This time it's to unravel a labyrinth of nefarious connections among governments, corporations, and international criminals involved in industrial espionage.

Taking on Larsson's mantle is Swedish crime reporter and author David Lagercrantz. His novel "The Girl in The Spider's Web" is now the fourth in the Millennium series.

Lagercrantz delves into Larsson's world and reprises many of the riveting characters and themes that thrilled readers in the first three books: "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "The Girl Who Played With Fire," and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest." The indomitable pierced, tattooed, and punk outlier Lisbeth is back, with her fury against perpetrators of violence against women and fierce determination to right the world's wrongs. So is Mikael Blomkvist, ace investigative reporter always in search of the truth. So are Holger Palmgren, Lisbeth's former guardian, and Erika Berger, editor-in-chief of the Millennium magazine and Blomkvist's occasional lover. In "Spider's Web," Lisbeth's beautiful, very evil and sadistic twin sister, Camilla, takes a much larger role.

Like Larsson, Lagercrantz has created a thrilling page-turner. Lisbeth and Mikael retain their magic. But where Larsson's shifts of perspective melded with his dramatic narrative style, in Lagercrantz's hands they become clumsy and frustrating. Characters arise, disappear and then, after they've been forgotten by the reader, they reappear and the narrative arc becomes lost until later. With no index, readers are left to flip through printed pages or scroll through electronic devices to remember who's who and what their history is.

Once again, violence, sadism, brutal sex, corruption, rape, murder and revenge rear their ugly heads. To the mix Lagercrantz then adds cyber security, the lack thereof, upheavals in print media and a fleshing out of Lisbeth's back story.

"The Girl in the Spider's Web" is all about hacking. While past readers know that Lisbeth is an expert in this area, here she is portrayed as an formidable computer genius whose hacks are both unique and mathematically beautiful.

(Alert: It no doubt helps to know about such esoteric subjects like prime number factorization, singularity theory, black holes and algorithms. The good news is the reader can still grasp what's going on without such knowledge.)

Blomkvist is down on his luck: He's hasn't had a major scoop in a while, and the media is portraying him as a has-been. Millennium has been bought by a corporation who is eager to bring changes to the magazine, including Blomkvist's ouster. And then a source appears with a story that concerns the U.S. National Security Agency, the Russian government, the Swedish Security Police, and international criminal gangs. With the mention of a "weirdo hacker" that immediately brings Salander to Blomkvist's mind, Blomkvist becomes hooked.

The story centers on Frans Balder, a legendary computer science professor, whose computer was hacked and his technology stolen. He has disappeared, taking with him his severely autistic but mathematically and artistically savant 11-year old son.

August witnesses his father's brutal murder. But the boy's lack of speech and other communication skills hampers any investigation. Nonetheless, the murderer and his cronies are determined to get rid of him, and much of the rest of the book focuses on Salander's and Blomkvist's efforts to ensure his protection and figure out who the bad guys are.

Unfortunately, their leaps of logic are not fully explained beyond "the penny dropped." How the dropped penny made some characters arrive at brilliant realizations is left hanging.

In true Millennium style, the story is fast paced and doesn't disappoint. Murder and mayhem are resolved, save for the elusive Camilla, who will no doubt reappear in future books in the series.

Given the recent publicity around devastating hacks in corporations, financial institutions, and even the U.S. government by murky gangs and foreign governments, "Girl in the Spider Web," is both very timely and chillingly plausible.

"Girl in the Spider Web"
David Lagercrantz
Alfred A. Knopf
$27.95