‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ takes ‘Eye for an Eye’

Stockholm: Lisbeth Salander, the androgynous heroine and tattooed computer hacker from the Millennium series, is set to grip readers’ imaginations again as the fifth volume hit bookshelves on Thursday.

The new book by the 55year-old David Lagercrantz, titled The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye, reveals more secrets surrounding the mysterious Salander’s troubled childhood and the true meaning behind her iconic dragonshaped tattoo.

When Lagercrantz’s fourth tome The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which received mixed reviews, was launched in 2015, he was met with overcrowded press conferences, journalists queuing for interviews and midnight book signings.

The launch of the fifth volume was however more low key — Mr Lagercrantz was to make no public appearances until his book tour kicks off on September 10.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web was the first sequel to the trilogy conceived by Stieg Larsson, who became one of the world’s best-loved crime writers.

But Mr Larsson’s fame came posthumously.

He died at the age of 50 from a heart attack in 2004, a year before the release of the first book in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, followed by The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007).

While many Mr Larsson fans rejoiced over the continuation of the trilogy when Mr Lagercrantz was selected to write the fourth book, some — including Mr Larsson’s longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson — vehemently opposed him taking up the torch, calling him ‘a totally idiotic choice’.

“Everybody was very curious. We wanted to see if he was going to succeed,” Lund University literature professor Kerstin Bergman said.

“It was a good crime novel, very different from Stieg Larsson’s (book),” she said, referring to the fourth book.

But as much as readers can’t get enough of Lisbeth’s punk-rock feminism, the hype over Mr Lagercrantz’s continuation of the series is not what it used to be.