author Kristen Houghton
Finding out that another writer has taken over the characters created by your favorite author is similar to discovering that a total stranger has come in to your house and rearranged the furniture in your living room. The furniture is still there, just in a different setting and you’re not sure if you like it at all. Readers are that loyal to their fav authors and the characters they’ve created. And we’re also very loyal to the actors portraying these characters on screen.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the fourth installment of Stieg Larsson’s magnificently intriguing Millennium Series was written by David Lagercrantz after Stieg Larsson suffered a fatal heart attack in 2004. The novel was released in the United States in September of 2015. The movie of the same name is up for a 2017 summer, release.
The Swedish title of the book, Det som inte dödar oss, translates as “That which does not kill us,” explores the main characters of Lisbeth Salander, (she of the dragon tattoo), and journalist, Mikael Blomkvist. It opens with a recurring childhood memory of Salander’s. Her childhood was dysfunctional to say the least and as the book begins she is attempting to track down someone from her past. During her investigations, she is led to an elite group of Russian criminals who call themselves the Spider Society, led by a mastermind by the name of Thanos.
But, in her every day life, Salander had also taken on a new hacking project. She helps the Hacker Republic gain entry into the servers of the United States National Security Agency, the currently newsworthy NSA. Salander is, as always the best at hacking, and she succeeds, putting her on the NSA’s radar. This makes her a top priority, alongside other nefarious persons of interest, whom the NSA are trying to identify.
Mikael Blomkvist, on the other hand is having a life crisis. He feels as if he is stuck in a rut with his magazine Millenium. Are his crusading journalist days over? The publication has begun to stagnate and Mikael is in danger of losing creative control to outside investors. When a former associate of his, named Linus Brandell, offers him information on a computer scientist, Frans Balder, who is in imminent danger from the Spider Society, Blomkvist is not interested. Not interested until Brandell mentions Balder’s possible connection to Lisbeth Salander.
Though the book is readable, readers of the first three in the series will know immediately that this book is not written in the voice of Stieg Larsson. That may not be surprising when you read comments that Lagercrantz has made concerning the character of Mikael Blomkvist:
“I have one criticism against Stieg Larsson and his portrait of the protagonist Mikael Blomkvist. Women came to him, fell down, and wanted to sleep with him; he didn't even have to charm them. I tried to tone this down as I couldn’t understand it.”
Indeed, Larsson's long-term domestic partner, Eva Gabrielsson, has voiced strong criticism of Lagercrantz, calling him a “completely idiotic choice” to continue Larsson’s Millennium series. Gabrielsson possesses Larsson’s fourth manuscript, (unfinished), of the Millennium series. Not one word, however, is in The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
As far as the Larsson created characters, Lagercrantz speaks more kindly of Larsson’s portrayal of Lisbeth Salander saying that:
“She is one of the heroines, I think, of the 21st century, and a most unlikely heroine. She’s brave, she's intrepid, not easily frightened, she’s got a moral core. And, I hope people will just welcome the return of this extremely unlikely pair of Salander and this crusading journalist.”
Unlikely pairing? Readers and movie-goers will have to judge whether Lagercrantz can fill the literary shoes of the incredibly talented Stieg Larsson.
Kristen Houghton’s new novel, Unrepentant: Pray for Us Sinners, book 3 in her best-selling series, A Cate Harlow Private Investigation has been voted one of the top five novels by International Mystery Writers.
Houghton is the author of nine novels, two non-fiction books, a collection of short stories appearing in anthologies, and a children’s novella.
She is the author of the Horror Writers of America award-winning Welcome to Hell and is hard at work on a new series that features a paranormal investigator with distinct, untried powers of her own.