The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye

Starred review from August 28, 2017
Lagercrantz’s excellent second contribution to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series finds Lisbeth Salander serving a two-month sentence in Flodberga, the only maximum security women’s prison in Sweden, for unlawful use of property and reckless endangerment stemming from a murder case chronicled in 2015’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Lisbeth doesn’t mind her incarceration, since it allows her to work on her attempt to combine quantum mechanics with the theory of relativity, but she’s annoyed that her section of the prison has been taken over by gang leader Benito Andersson, who’s torturing a beautiful young Bangladeshi prisoner, Faria Kazi, a convicted murderer. Lisbeth is also troubled by a visit from her old guardian, Holger Palmgren, who informs her that he has some startling information: Lisbeth might have been part of a study dealing with twins when she was a patient at St. Stefan’s psychiatric clinic for children. Determined to learn more about this study, Lisbeth asks her friend Mikael Blomkvist, editor of Millennium magazine, for help. After her release, Lisbeth investigates the case of the Bangladeshi prisoner, and Blomkvist delves into Lisbeth’s childhood. Eventually, these twisting plot lines tie together in this complicated, fascinating mystery. As a bonus, readers learn the meaning of the dragon tattoo on Lisbeth’s back. Agent: Magdalena Hedlund, Norstedts Agency (Sweden).

September 15, 2017
"First you find out the truth. Then you take revenge." Thus the ninjalike guiding ethos of Lagercrantz's (The Girl in the Spider's Web, 2015, etc.) latest installment in the Lisbeth Salander series.One thing that anyone who's crossed paths with Lisbeth, the lethal heroine who bowed into the world of mystery with the late Steig Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), should have learned by now is that it's best not to cross paths with her at all. That's a lesson Benito learns the hard way: the gang leader in Flodberga Prison, where Lisbeth finds herself after yet another brush with the law, interrupts Lisbeth's studies of mathematics and quantum mechanics one too many times, picking on Faria, a young Bangladeshi inmate, and ends up just this side of death. She had it coming, of course, but the whole encounter opens up a whole 'nother can of worms, from shadowy immigrants to Russian hackers and crusading journalists and--well, suffice it to say that, in a turn reminiscent of Jean-Christophe Grange's Crimson Rivers, there's some genetic tinkering with twins involved, too. Whether Lisbeth's doppelganger is dragon-adorned awaits the reader's investigation, but most of the action, always satisfying if sometimes a little far-fetched, centers on Lisbeth and her various and often violent encounters with corrupt prison officials and guards, corrupt CEOs, corrupt mental health professionals, corrupt government workers, and--the list of not-so-nice people goes on, and Lisbeth, as always, serves as an avenging angel who herself isn't the nicest of people. Lagercrantz, Larsson's appointed heir, does serviceable work in all this, and if his version lacks some of Larsson's ironic touch and politically charged contempt for the nasty undercurrents flowing beneath Sweden's clear waters, he doesn't falter in the mayhem department. Tattoo artists will be interested in the as-if-born-in-fire origins of Lisbeth's body art, while fans of Larsson, while perhaps not thrilled, certainly won't be disappointed.

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April 15, 2017

Lagercrantz's The Girl in the Spider's Web picked up where Stieg Larsson's phenomenal "Millennium" trilogy left off, and more than a million copies have been sold so far in the hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook formats. No hint on plot here, but big promotion at BEA and a national tour, too.

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