I have read Sherlock Holmes and James Bond books not written by Conan Doyle or Ian Fleming. Some of those 'authorized' follow-ups have been pretty good. This one is very good. Here, the author has the setting, a very good story, Blomkvist and Salander. Unfortunately, very good is not the standard that Larsson established - he often achieved greatness. The emphasis is heavily on the world of hackers and hacking. Salander hacks an NSA system in a search for her twin sister and information about her father's criminal empire. That leads to the American and Swedish authorities looking for her, while at the same time, the world's leading authority on AI is killed in Stockholm. The son of the AI genius is an autistic savant who is sought after because it is believed he can draw the face of the killer. Pretty soon everybody is looking for the boy, Salander and a lot of unseemly Russians. I'll leave it at that - no one likes a spoiler.
Lee Child in Sunday's Times review was able to make the distinction between good and great much better I can. He said, " It is no exaggeration to say that as an invention she's in the same ballpark as Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter. She's a classic antihero - fundamentally deranged, objectively appalling, lawless, violent and deceitful, but fiercely loved by millions of readers because she has good reasons for the way she is and a heart of gold. Can she be brought back to life by different author- or will she lie inert on the slab?" Child concludes "the sublime madness of Larsson's original isn't quite there." That said, great characters, a solid story and the virtual assurance of a continuation of the battle with her twin sister means that this series has legs. I'm sure I'll pre-order the next "Girl".
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