The Millennium Trilogy (tome 3)

“Trinity and Bob the Dog devoted the best part of a week to identifying and separating out Ekström’s mobile from the background noise of about 200,000 other mobile telephones. They used a technique called Random Frequency Tracking System.” Stieg Larsson, The Girl who kicked the hornets’ nest

While I was reading the second volume of The Millennium Trilogy, I [addictedly!] ordered the third volume , The Girl who kicked the hornets’ nest, and found it in my mailbox on my return from Padova. I started reading it on Saturday night and [addictedly!] kept reading and reading till it was over, on Monday early morning! The conclusion is that…The Millennium Trilogy is indeed truly addictive, although not very well-written nor even altogether convincing. In somewhat of a contradiction with several of my friends, I actually preferred the second volume of the series, the first one being too brutal and the last one too predictable.

“Plague ran Ekström’s digitized voice through a program called V.P.R.. When he had five separate examples of a word, he charted it with respect to the time it took to speak the word, what tone of voice and frequency range it took to speak the word, and a dozen other markers. The result was a graph.” Stieg Larsson, The Girl who kicked the hornets’ nest

This last novel has several interesting literary features but still shares many of the defects of the previous volumes. For instance, the poor habit of launching into useless descriptions. This time, instead of the unabridged Ikea catalog, we are given the complete tour of the home protection company… Similarly, the sudden relation of Blomkvist with a policewoman has been announced by red flags for dozens of pages in advance (even though it is quite a hilarious tryst!). The gun-battle in the restaurant is rather implausible, even though its role in the plot is meaningful. Maybe the least convincing part of this plot is the counterstrike at the secret cell within the National Security Agency, S.I.S., coming from the same agency but from “good” agents, as they manage to dismantle a well-organised if small secret unit that has been operated for fifty years in complete anonymity. The pace at which this reaction of the legal side takes place is gripping and helps very much at making the book addictive!, but I feel the story is stretched quite thin at this stage. The [bad] secret [secret] agents are also a bit too stupid to have survived fifty years of this regime, while Blomkvist’ lawyer sister is [again] too smart for the defence of Salander (even thought the availability of hard proofs like Burjman’s video are a big help!)…

“She opened the door wide and let him into her life again.” Stieg Larsson, The Girl who kicked the hornets’ nest

On the positive side, I appreciate the return to the main characters Blomkvist and Berger acting as engaged journalists. The passage of Berger at the main Swedish daily, Svenske Morgon-Posten, is quite convincing, both in terms of handling a large team of professionals with short-term goals and of facing antagonism from male colleagues (and the resolution of the stalking sub-story is quite surprising!). The most appealing part of the book is the unité de lieu imposed on Salander by her stay in the hospital as this forces the author to focus on psychological descriptions of Salander rather than detailing her grocery bills… The trick imagined to get her to communicate with the outside world (incl. Blomkvist and Berger) is quite good and the connection she builds with the neurosurgeon is also believable. I also loved discovering the fact that Paolo Roberto is a real boxer (who also plays his own role in the movies!) while the book was making fun of a reverse situation where Blomkvist runs into an actor who plays the role of a detective. (I am not sure I am clear enough there!) The death of Salander’s father comes as a complete surprise (even though we have to surmise that the old security agent is deeply sick). And involving the Prime Minister is also a nice move by Stieg Larssen! At last, the final battle of Salander and Niederman is nailed down in the most original (if gory) manner! Even Fermat’s last theorem comes back with a twist that makes me reconsider the second volume in a much more positive manner. I thus [reluctantly] conclude at a good readable fast-paced story with the shortcomings of the genre (not only the inconsistencies, and the too many coincidences, but also the perturbing fact that the main characters have this vigilante impulse to make justice outside the legal system)… A perfect book for a long plane ride.