The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The is the last installment of Larsson's enormously popular so called Millennium Trilogy.  It was so popular that in my lunch break at Bryant's Park yesterday I saw two other people reading his first and second book within a radius of fifteen feet.  Being in the US and not ready to buy any imported paperback at grossly inflated price, I got my brand spanking new hardcover from eBay, which is a few dollars cheaper than Amazon but just as good if not better.  It arrived at lightning speed with tracking so there is no complaint but praise.  The book is more than 500 pages thick and if anything I think my biceps just got better toned after holding it on the train for a week or so.

The first "Dragon Tattoo" is about serial killings, the second "Played with Fire" is about revenge and this third one  "The Hornet's Nest" is about government conspiracy so big and so horrendous that you just can't believe it, especially of all places, in Sweden where people are just nice and beautiful.  Anyway, the three books all carry a common theme: excessive coffee consumption.  Before reading this trilogy, my feeble mind thought only Americans would be so crude as to drink coffee all the time.  Well I know we have company now.

"The Hornet's Nest," being the last installment brings closure and certain sadness to the trilogy knowing full well that if there is any more sequel or spin-off it won't be from Larsson himself because he passed away before the books were published.  However, there are talks or rumors that there does exist an almost finished novel in his laptop or something to that extent according to an article I read in The New York Times magazine not too long ago--that is if I remember it correctly.  This final installment does tie all the loose ends and gives a very traditional and satisfying ending: the protagonists live while the bad guys either got killed or busted.  Justice is served.  The End.  The only loose end, if there is one, is though there are mentions of Lisbeth's twin sister starting in the second book but she is even more elusive than Lisbeth as a character, till the very end, she is only mentioned but not present.  Perhaps she is meant to appear in subsequent Millennium stories.  Alas, that would never happen, not from the original creator anyway.