Salander is back
When Swedish author Stieg Larsson penned The
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in 2004, he said it was the first novel of a trilogy about fictitious Stockholm weekly magazine Millennium. Of the characters he created for it, one was extraordinary. Lisbeth Salander was a grown waif — still a punk, to look at her.
Being a trained boxer and a dead shot went with her image. There was serious question of whether she was competent to handle her own affairs. All of which was true. Her being accused of murder wasn’t. However, there was another side to her that only her friends knew. Salander was a super computer hacker and had an effective memory, forgetting nothing. She hated crime.
Despite Larsson’s untimely death, his fans clamoured for more. His estate and the publisher went in search of someone to fill his shoes. It took them a decade to tap fellow Swedish scrivener David Lagercrantz, who proceeded to write a sequel to the series called The Girl In The Spider’s Web. It came out in 2015, carrying over characters and adding new ones. Our heroine outhacks criminals breaking through government firewalls, not least those of the US, to steal their national security secrets and sell them to the highest bidder. Finding them is a scoop for Millennium.
Among her enemies is her evil twin sister Camila, with whom she has a blood feud, wounding Salander in a shootout. FYI, they are the Russian émigrés, their father a mafia boss. Much is made of the research going on to create artificial intelligence. The key is quantum technology. Other writers are following these advances as well (eg Ken Follett). The mind boggles at the concept of the internet thinking for itself.
To this reviewer, the most interesting character isn’t Lisbeth but Alexander, an eight-year-old autistic boy. A higher mathematics genius, he solves equations that stump professors. He also has the ability to remember and draw them as clearly as a photograph. A murderer is sent to prison on the evidence of one of the boy’s pictures. Little wonder that he’s ripe for kidnapping.
The Girl In The Spider’s Web has been made into a film. As Salander is so complex, it is difficult to make her physically three-dimensional. There are no men in her life.