DRAGON TATTOO IN INK AGAIN
Despite Stieg Larsson’s untimely death, his blockbuster Millennium Series lives on — and we have an excerpt,
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series is one of the biggest blockbuster collections of the century. The first three books, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide. He died suddenly in 2004, at age 50, before the series had really taken off. Fans of the three books thought that would be the end. But Larsson’s publisher hired the Swedish writer David Lagercrantz to reprise the series. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, the unlikely heroes of these modern detective novels, return in The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Here’s a sneak preview of the book, out Sept. 1:
Salander went to her computer and skimmed through some of Edelman’s papers on the net; she may have found the odd little touch of vanity, even in the most factual passages, but there was nothing clumsy or psychologically naïve in what he had written. On the contrary, the man was sharp. So she went back to the e-mails and checked to find out which SMTP server it had been transmitted through, and that made her jump right away. The server, Birdino, was not familiar, which it should have been, so she sent it a series of commands to see exactly what it was. In a matter of seconds she had the evidence in black and white: the server supported open mail relay, and the sender could therefore transmit messages from any address he wanted.
In other words, the email from Edelman was a fake, and the copies to Bublanski and Modig were just a smokescreen. She hardly even needed to check, she already knew what had happened: the police’s replies and the approval of the altered arrangements were also a bluff. It didn’t just mean that someone was pretending to be Edelman. There also had to be a leak, and above all, somebody wanted the boy outside on Sveavagen.
Somebody wanted him defenceless in the street so that . . . what? They could kidnap or get rid of him? Salander looked at her watch, it was already 8:55. In just twenty minutes Torkel Linden and August Balder would be outside waiting for someone who was not Professor Edelman, and who had anything but good intentions towards them.
What should she do? Call the police? That was never her first choice.
She was especially reluctant when there was a risk of leaks. Instead, she went onto Oden’s website and got hold of Linden’s office number. But she only made it as far as the switchboard. Linden was in a meeting. So she found his mobile. After ending up in his voicemail, she swore out loud, and sent him both a text and an e-mail telling him on no account to go out into the street with the boy, not under any circumstances. She signed herself “Wasp” for lack of any better idea.
Then she threw on her leather jacket and rushed out. But she turned, ran back into the apartment and packed her laptop with the encrypted file and her pistol, a Beretta 92, into a black sports bag. Then she hurried out again. She wondered if she should take her car, the B.M.W. M6 Convertible gathering dust in the garage. But she decided a taxi would be quicker. She soon regretted it. When a taxi finally appeared, it was clear that rush-hour had not subsided.
Traffic inched forward and Centralbron was almost at a standstill. Had there been an accident? Everything went slowly, everything but the time, which flew. Soon it was 9:05, then 9:10. She was in a tearing hurry and in the worst case it was already too late. Most likely Linden and the boy went out onto the street ahead of time and the killer, or whoever it was, had already struck.
She dialed Linden’s number again. This time the call went through, but there was no answer, so she swore again and thought of Mikael Blomkvist. She had not actually spoken to him in ages. But now she called him and he answered, sounding irritated. Only when he realized who it was did he brighten up: “Lisbeth, is that you?” “Shut up and listen,” she said. Excerpted from The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz, available Sept. 1, 2015 wherever books are sold. Copyright © 2015 David Lagercrantz. Published by Viking Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.