Book Review – The Girl in the Spider’s Web

This book is the continuation of the Stieg Larsson series. While Larsson’s series was wrapped in the world of finance and banking, technology takes more of a prominent role in Lagercrantz’s entry in the series.

For a book with ‘The Girl’ in the title, the interesting title character, Lisbeth Salander, doesn’t make an appearance in the book until nearly 40% in. When she is featured, it is for short bursts. The book doesn’t feature this multi-dimensional character nearly enough. If this series is to continue, it needs to go back to what brought it to prominence.

This story, instead of focusing on corporate and economic intrigue like those in the triology, focuses on the use of artificial intelligence and the ramifications of it progressing in an unregulated fashion. A brilliant scientist in this field is murdered and the protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, has been contacted to unravel the situation. The story has ties to United States intelligence that are distracting to the plot.

Then there is the matter of the underuse of Lisbeth Salander’s character. She flits in and out of the story, but is also not as integral to the plot as she was in the original trilology.

I’m always torn when characters belonging to an author that is deceased are continued on by other authors. I was disappointed by the Godfather books by Mark Winegardner. I know that he was selected by Mario Puzo’s family to continue the series, but these books were sub-par. I found the same disappointment reading Kyle Mills effort to continue the late Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series in The Survivor.

Overall, I gave this book three out of five pizzas.