Series: Millenium #5
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 448, Kindle Edition
Published: 2017 by MacLehose Press
Cover Rating: 4/5
To continue the legacy left by Steig Larsson, Swedish writer David Lagercrantz has made another effort with the release of The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye. Blomkvist and Salander join forces once again to try and bring down the forces of the Registry. It is being chilly here in past few days, and I love reading crime novels at this time of the year. Perfect weather for Scandinavian crime stories.
This book is the fifth instalment in the Millennium series. The storyline starts as a reader will find Miss Lisbeth Salander in Flodberga prison. Her fault was that she saved an autistic child from his abuser and got too aggressive in doing that. She offered no defence and landed two months of imprisonment. Her troubles do not end here. In prison, she finds another victim who needs saving both morally and physically. Fazia Kazi’s crime is that she killed her brother after he killed her boyfriend in an Islamic blood feud. She is the favourite target of a woman called Benito who has a swastika tattooed on her throat and calls herself Benito after an Italian fascist. Every evening.
Salander, as reader can recall from her past novels, has zero tolerance for abuse. She has sustained enough of it in her life, starting from her childhood. Fight begins and Salander has to rescue the girl. Meanwhile, the second major character of this novel, Mikael Blomqvist, is left on a trail of a boy with as little information provided by Salander during Mikael’s weekly visits on every Friday. At first Mikael isn’t sure about the least amount of information he has been provided with, which also annoys him. Then a series of events happen and we, the readers, can observe through our reading eyes that Lisbeth and Mikael are once again together and are after an organisation that used identical twins in different enironments to study for their own research and interest and that has a lot to do with Salander’s past.
With an interesting plot, Lagercrantz reveals about the origin of Lisbeth Salander’s dragon tattoo. That is one significant part of this novel and is also good to see that he is making an effort to keep things interesting on the writer’s end. I know, he is not Steig Larsson, in the review of his previous Millennium work The Girl in the Spider’s Web, I expressed my feelings. His writing style is different from Larsson, his way of feeding information to the reader is unique as compared to Steig but it is good to see that he making an effort to keep the characters alive. One major noticeable difference is the level of details in the aspect of running Lisbeth Salander’s character. Lagercrantz writes and expresses things with adorable protagonist differently than Steig Larsson has done in the first three novels of this series.
I like the way Lagercrantz has intertwine two different but thrilling major plots and few subplots that hold the tendency to surprise anyone, and by continuing to explore the path of Salander’s character. His continuation of old characterisation and introducing new characters are a match made in heaven. The noir effect is there and one may or may not imagine it. The pace of the novel is good, with one or two dragging elements or situations. I can say, overall, I enjoyed it.
I recommend this book to most crime fiction lovers and some one wants to enjoy a good mystery on a long wintry night.
I didn’t even know they made more books of the Millennium series. I’ve seen and reviewed the movie trilogy on Iridium Eye, but I need to read the books.
Is it as good as Steig Larrson?
It is good in its own way. Definitely not in-detail as Steig’s.