What’s more anticipated than LeBron James playing in New York and attracting more buzz than the Waverly?
Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”
Already an international bestseller and the most-preordered US novel on Amazon, the Swedish crime thriller hits the shelves here Tuesday.
The book concludes the blockbuster Swedish crime trilogy that began in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
Together, the books are known as Millennium III, after the fictional magazine run by Mikael Blomkvist, author Larsson’s unassuming, junk-food downing, cigarette-smoking alter-ego. (Larsson died in 2004 at age 50 of a massive heart attack, shortly after delivering the three manuscripts to his publisher.)
The story’s heroine is Lisbeth Salander, wearer of the aforementioned tattoo and a surly 24-year-old hacker with a heart of gold. (Picture a goth Pippi Longstocking.) A researcher for a private-investigation company, she also has a juvenile record and mysterious past.
Salander meets Blomkvist through her firm, when someone looking to hire the journalist needs a background check. The duo soon join forces to solve a decades-old missing-person case.
Blomkvist and Salander tote the latest Apple laptops and Palm PDAs, trot off to eco-friendly archipelagos, shop in IKEA and H&M, and inhale Marlboro Lights. They solve the mystery, but not before a steamy tryst.
Swedish urban hipsters immediately embraced the books, igniting a global sensation.
A new Larsson novel now gets the kind of reception formerly the sole provenance of tweens waiting for installments of “Twilight” and “Harry Potter.”
Larsson’s second novel, “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” unearths Salander’s past as she herself is framed for a murder. Her father, we learn, is a Russian gangster named Zalachenko who is so useful to Sweden, he is protected not by the country’s secret police, but by a secret group within the secret police. That group had Salander committed for much of her childhood, after she tried to kill Zalachenko to keep him from killing her mother.
Impatient US readers have been paying as much as five times the price for the UK edition of the book, published in the fall.
This is in part because “Fire” ended in a eye-popping cliffhanger. Left for dead by her father, Salander digs herself out of a shallow grave, using her cigarette case to scoop dirt away. When Blomkvist finally finds here, she’s on the kitchen bench of her father’s house, a hole in her head and a gun in her hand — but still breathing.
American readers have been waiting since July 2009 to find out what happens next. Good marketing? Perhaps not. “We were tarred and feathered for not bringing it out right away,” says Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards.
As “Hornet’s Nest” begins, a famous brain surgeon is admiring the handiwork of Blomkvist, who while waiting for help has duct-taped Salander’s brains back inside her skull.
But it’s still a sticky situation. Accused of two murders, Lisbeth must prove both her innocence and her sanity, all while under round-the-clock police surveillance.
Enter, the book’s true hero: technology. Holding a contraband Palm Pilot under the covers of her hospital bed, Salander seeks both the real killers and people who framed her.
In terms of plot, books two and three blend together as Salander battles legal injustice, the mental health-care establishment, the global-crime network and her own personal demons.
While it would be unfair to give the ending away, one could argue that the conclusion is worth the wait. In any case, there’s plenty of sex, violence, electronic gadgetry, and really unhealthy food along the way.
Although the trilogy has concluded and the author is dead, the “Dragon Tattoo” still has plenty of steam. A Swedish movie of the first novel was released here in March. Film versions of the second book, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and also of “Hornet’s Nest,” are showing in Europe and slated for US release in July and October, respectively. And Sony is pursuing a Hollywood version, with rumors swirling that Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart and Carey Mulligan are all being considered for the main role.
Meanwhile, back in Sweden, a new drama is brewing, as Larsson’s heirs fight over his estate. The central issue: a partial rough draft of the fourth book found on the author’s laptop.
Stay tuned.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
by Stieg Larsson
Knopf