The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
Atattooed young woman lies in intensive care, a bullet in her brain. A few rooms away is the man who has tried to kill her – her father. His body bears multiple axe injuries (inflicted by the young woman). If she recovers, she will face trial for three murders – but not if the man down the hall is able to kill her first.
There’s no arguing that The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest hits the ground running, and the pace rarely lets up for an arm-straining 600 pages. It’s an exhilarating, if exhausting, read. But the book is also something very special, and unique, in the world of crime thrillers.
Once again, Stieg Larsson grabs our attention with his two protagonists: Lisbeth Salander and the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who fights to clear her name – even though she dumped him as her lover. Salander’s numerous enemies here include some very nasty types, from her hideous father to equally murderous secret organisations and self-serving politicians. And these various nemeses all want her discredited – or dead. Larsson is unsparing in the area of grisly violence (one more characteristic – along with a vulnerable heroine – he shares with another bestselling author, Thomas Harris). But this is a strong and satisfying conclusion to a massively ambitious, richly detailed trilogy, and readers will regret that this is our last opportunity to share the invigorating company of Lisbeth Salander – until we watch the various films of the books.
The minute and detailed analysis of plot incident with which the first two books have been addressed seems not quite as appropriate here; not because there is less plot (in many ways the narrative is as densely packed as before), but because there is a trajectory in which individual incident is perhaps not as important than the rounding off of certain themes and notions about the central characters. Part One is entitled ‘Intermezzo in a Corridor’, and this musical allusion is certainly on the ironic side. The musical form employed throughout this book is largely accelerando with none of the languor of an intermezzo.
The chapter begins with a superscription concerning the hundreds of women who served during the American civil war disguised as men, and Larsson makes points about historians having difficulty dealing with gender distinctions. (His remark about women taking part in Swedish moose hunts has a certain unintended irony from a left-wing writer such as Larsson, when most readers’ image of a moose-hunting woman will be the extremely right-wing presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.) He goes on to discuss Amazons and warrior women, mentioning Boudicca, honoured with a statue in London on the Thames near Big Ben, and suggests that the reader ‘say hello to her if they pass by’. One might argue that his own warrior woman, Salander, is somebody one would be ill-advised to say a casual hello to. Particularly if you are a male who has been engaged in any inappropriate sexual activity.
The doctor, Jonasson, who is reporting on Salander, is tired after a variety of life-saving operations, and is described as a goal-keeper standing between the patient and the funeral service, with his decisions ineluctably life-and-death ones – ironically, of course, life-and-death decisions are those repeatedly taken by the two protagonists throughout the length of the story. Jonasson is told that the girl lying injured in the hospital room is Lisbeth Salander – the girl who has been hunted for weeks for a triple murder in Stockholm. This does not particularly interest him, as he perceives his job to be that of saving a patient’s life. We are given a vivid picture of the barely controlled chaos of an A&E department, and a brief character sketch of the doctor, which some readers might see as irrelevant, but will now recognise this as a part of Larsson’s strategy to flesh out the bones of his narrative. We are given a report on the woman in her mid-20s who is lying, barely alive, with a weak pulse and various bullets in her body. The fact that she is still alive after having a bullet lodged so near her brain is considered something of a miracle.
After this arresting opening, Larsson cuts to Blomkvist, looking at a clock and discovering that it is after three o’clock in the morning. He is handcuffed, exhausted and sitting at a kitchen table in a farmhouse near Nossebro. Blomkvist is remonstrating with a man who is keeping him prisoner, calling him an imbecile: ‘I warned you he was dangerous, for Christ’s sake… I told you that you would have to handle him like a live grenade.’ Blomkvist is in a state of some depression, having found Salander after midnight, wounded in what might be a mortal fashion. He had sent for the rescue service and the police. The medics had also taken care of Alexander Zalachenko. We are reminded that this man was both Salander’s father and her worst enemy – he had tried to kill her and had earned an axe wound in his face and considerable damage to one of his legs for the attempt.
Calling Erika Berger on his mobile, Blomkvist fills her in on the situation, pointing out that Salander is the one who is in considerable danger. The policeman with whom Blomkvist is so infuriated is Paulsson, who is presented by Larsson as the most thick-headed kind of copper. Blomkvist tries to explain that the man who had actually committed the murders in Stockholm was not Lisbeth but Ronald Niedermann, an incredibly powerful man who had been left sitting tied to a traffic sign in a ditch. The attempt to arrest him by Paulsson’s men has, of course, resulted in bloody violence and the escape of a highly dangerous man. Blomkvist insists that a call is made to Inspector Bublanski – a policeman that the journalist knows he can trust.
We then cut to another sympathetic copper, Inspector Modig. She has awoken at four o’clock to learn from Bublanski that everything ‘has gone to hell down in Trollhättan’. She is told that Blomkvist found Salander, Niedermann and Zalachenko, and her colleague gives her a rough idea of the state of things. These two intelligent police officers realise that the situation has degenerated into something like chaos. A further police discussion ties up plot elements with which the reader is now familiar – such as the fact that the ruthless Zalachenko is Lisbeth’s father and was a hitman for Russian military intelligence, who defected in the 1970s and has been running his own criminal network since that date. All of this is conveyed by Blomkvist, who now looks utterly exhausted. Inspector Erlander, listening to the summing up (including the fact that Salander is innocent of the murders she is accused of) finds himself willing to listen, particularly as he does not give much credence to the deductions of the inefficient Paulsson. However, the story is so outrageous that he finds his credulity being stretched.
Larsson takes us back to the hospital room where Doctor Jonasson is pulling off his bloodstained gloves after the operation. We don’t yet know the result. Blomkvist, meanwhile, has persuaded Erlander that Salander was shot and buried at the farmhouse, but has somehow managed to survive and dig herself free. The police continue to search for the escaped monster who had cut a swathe through their ranks – a missing patrol car is discovered, and it is supposed that the escaped criminal has switched vehicles. Blomkvist asks if there is any information concerning Salander’s condition and is told that she has been operated on during the night, with a bullet being removed from her head. He asks about Zalachenko and the police at that point are not aware who he is talking about. However, Blomkvist learns that Lisbeth’s father was also operated on last night for a deep gash across his face and another below the kneecap. His injuries are severe but not life-threatening. Blomkvist is talking to Modig who, broadly speaking, he trusts. He points out that he knows Salander’s secret hideout, but as she has spent considerable time creating the bolt hole for herself he has no intention of revealing it to them. Modig reminds him that this is a murder investigation, to which Blomkvist snaps, ‘You still haven’t got it, have you?’ Lisbeth is in fact innocent and the police have violated her and destroyed her reputation in ways that beggar belief.
This is, of course, part of the strategy that has been necessary throughout the three books and is not a million miles away from the tactics utilised by Hitchcock in such films as North By Northwest and The Thirty-Nine Steps: make it absolutely imperative that the central protagonist cannot call on the police for help, so that they are always at the extreme reaches of danger from both the heavies and the forces of the establishment. Of course, things are ratcheted up to the nth degree in the Millennium Trilogy, but the process remains a sound one in terms of engaging the reader’s sympathy. Blomkvist, of course, is more like most readers in being the person who is able to talk to the police and, to some degree, help to clarify the strands of the tangled narrative.
By now, more and more police are involved, several of whom are convinced that Salander was guilty of murder, and there is perhaps a danger that the author has introduced too many police officers, both sympathetic and otherwise, into the narrative – it is undoubtedly true that even the most well-disposed of readers sometimes have to struggle to remember which particular copper is being talked about at any moment (perhaps another reminder that a few profitable pruning sessions with an editor would have been an asset for Larsson). Later, Blomkvist remembers that his rental car was still at the farm, but he was too exhausted to call for it. Erlander arranges for the car to be picked up. It is at this point that the journalist makes a significant call, to someone he can trust – his sister Advokat Annika Giannini, a woman who will figure importantly in the narrative. When he has explained Salander’s extreme situation, Annika asks if Lisbeth might require her services as a lawyer. Her brother replies that the accused woman isn’t the type to ask anyone for help, but it is clear that from this point on – whether she wants it or not – Salander is to have someone else on her side. It might be noted that Larsson both admires Lisbeth’s self-sufficiency and simultaneously regards it as, finally, inadequate – she needs help, just as she herself offers it to a chosen few. She is, we are reminded, an incomplete personality.
The police search for the grotesque Niedermann continues, without much success (Larsson is aware that a man of such a distinctive appearance should be easy to track down, and does have his characters acknowledge this). The police talk about an inventory of the woodshed in which Zalachenko was found and there is another one of the author’s famous trouncings of an unsympathetic character (in this case, not – as is usual – a violent one). The wrong-headed Paulsson is disbelieved by all of his colleagues and has collapsed from exhaustion. There is general dissatisfaction about the fact that the incompetent policeman arrested Blomkvist. Finally, the ludicrous idea of a lesbian Satanist gang in Stockholm is trashed, and the police realise that Säpo, the security services, are involved and that perhaps – as Blomkvist claimed – there has been some kind of cover-up. The reader, of course, is aware that Zalachenko is being protected after his defection, and the attempted framing of Salander is all part of this fairly despicable attempt at concealment. The police finally realise that the next logical step is to interrogate Zalachenko with a view to finding out what he has to say about the murders in Stockholm – as well as learning Niedermann’s role in Zalachenko’s business (it is accepted that Zalachenko may be able to point them in the direction of the violent missing man).
As often happens in the trilogy, we are taken back to the offices of the magazine Millennium, and it is interesting to note how well these sections always function within the context of the novel – possibly because while much authorial invention is required for the more outlandish developments in the plot, in the sections involving the magazine, Larsson is able to draw upon his own experience in such environments to create a total verisimilitude. Erika Berger is talking to Blomkvist’s sister Annika, and the editor tells the lawyer that she is planning to resign from the magazine but hasn’t yet been able to tell her colleague and lover as he is so involved in the chaos surrounding Salander. Erika is, in fact, leaving to be the editor-in-chief of another prestigious journal – basically, an offer she cannot refuse. For the rest of the chapter, we are filled in on the dynamics of Millennium itself – not least the fact that its survival is now possibly in some doubt.
Chapter 3 begins in the company of the deeply unpleasant Zalachenko, who has been awake for several hours when inspectors Modig and Erlander arrive in his room. He has undergone an extensive operation in which a large section of his jaw has been realigned and set with titanium screws. The axe blow has apparently crushed his cheekbone and taken off a section of the flesh on the right side of his face. He is now, appropriately, physically the kind of monster that he has long been morally. Zalachenko’s approach with the two policemen is to pretend that he is now a broken man, old and lacking in physical resources. He points out that he had felt threatened by Niedermann, and when he is asked why his daughter threw a Molotov cocktail into his car in the early 1990s, he replies in a hostile tone that Salander is mentally ill.
Provocatively (playing good cop, bad cop), Modig decides to go in for the kill, by asking if his daughter’s actions had anything to do with the fact that he, Zalachenko, had beaten Lisbeth’s mother so badly that she suffered long-term brain damage. Zalachenko’s reply is characteristic: ‘That is all bullshit. Her mother was a whore. It was probably one of her punters who beat her up. I just happened to be passing by.’ Zalachenko points out that he wishes to press charges against his daughter for trying to kill him. Modig decides to dispense with any attempt at politeness and points out to Zalachenko that she now understands why his daughter would try to drive an axe into his head.
At this point in the novel, of course, its most charismatic and iconic character has been notable for her absence for some time – Larsson appreciates that he needs to ration out the appearances of his characters for them to retain their mystique. Salander awakes, aware of the smell of almonds and ethanol, and voices around her note that she is finally coming around. She can barely speak as Doctor Jonasson tells her that he has operated on her after an injury. Lisbeth has only vague memories of the appalling violence and conflict she has been through – and in which she has taken a considerable part herself.
Having established his heroine again, swimming back to a kind of consciousness and coherence, Larsson returns the narrative to Blomkvist, who has booked himself into a hotel room and is starting to feel human once again. Blomkvist is stunned to learn that Erika has decided to take a job on another magazine and rather hurt to find that he is the last to find out. As often before, Larsson now reintroduces us into the company of his deeply unpleasant heavies, notably the violent Nieminen, still smarting (both physically and otherwise) over the punishment he has undergone at the hands of the slight (but devastating) Salander. Nieminen and his equally unpleasant colleague Waltari find the murdered bodies of two of their associates: the woman’s neck has been broken and her head turned through 180 degrees, while the man has had his larynx rammed deep into his throat. The criminals are conscious of the fact that Niedermann was on the run and needed cash – the man he has murdered is the one who handles the money. The duo realise that they must track down Niedermann, which will require every contact they have in the clubs all over Scandinavia (one of them says: ‘I want that bastard’s head on a platter’).
Salander, in the hospital room, is slowly recuperating and talking to another doctor. At the same time, Zalachenko, still in extreme pain, is being visited by the police (including ‘that bloody Modig woman’) but he is not offering any suggestions as to how to track down Niedermann – now pursued by both the police and the heavies. Zalachenko begins to calculate how he is going to come out at the other end of this situation, and consults his colleagues in the security services as to how he can effect damage control. While Larsson presents the spooks as unsympathetic, they are mere beginners compared to the man they are helping, who says – about his own daughter – that she has to disappear. Her testimony must be declared invalid, and she will have to be committed to a mental institution for the rest of her life.
We are, of course, once again in the kind of situation that Larsson has frequently created for his beleaguered heroine, and it is a mark of his skill that he is still able to persuade the reader that such things could still happen, given the number of people who now know how Salander has been framed. However, it is perhaps easy to see from this that the perfect number of books to feature Salander was three – after a trilogy, it would be extremely unconvincing if the author were obliged to keep putting his heroine back into this particular situation ad infinitum.
Of the various scenarios that Larsson created to turn the screws on his protagonists, perhaps the most striking is the fact that Salander is recuperating in a hospital room just a few doors away from her murderous father. Blomkvist visits the other sympathetic male ‘protector’ of Lisbeth – her some-time employer Armansky – and asks the latter whether he can trust him or not. Armansky replies ‘I’m her friend. Although, as you know, that’s not necessarily the same thing as saying she’s my friend.’ But while Armansky is not prepared to engage in any sort of criminal activity, he is happy to listen to any strategy that Blomkvist might suggest in order to help Lisbeth. This, of course, involves Blomkvist’s sister Annika representing her legally. At this point, Larsson introduces another new character, an ex-Senior Administrative Officer at the Security Police, the elderly Gullberg who, although he has retired, still maintains a professional alertness.
We are then given one of the extensive Larsson character fill-ins that either help illuminate (if you are a sympathetic reader) or infuriate (if you are not), but which undoubtedly have the effect of bringing to life characters who become involved in the narrative. Gullberg had been involved in the Wennerström debacle, which caused major problems in the Security Police. Gullberg and his colleagues were financed through a special fund, but outwardly did not appear to exist within the structure of the security policy. Gullberg is at this point unaccountable to anyone. It is here that the author once again brings in real events by having Gullberg remember Election Day, 1976, and his own thoughts on the suitability as prime minister of real-life politician Olof Palme (who was, of course, assassinated). But in connection with Zala’s defection, Gullberg remembers a young man who would be prepared to bend the rules in the service of his boss: Gunnar Björck, who has, of course, figured throughout the narrative. Björck had dealt with Zalachenko when the latter requested asylum, and the two men were involved when a massive structure of secrecy was built around the prize defector.
Also involved in the reception for Zalachenko was the lawyer Nils Erik Bjurman who, of course, was one of the many sexual abusers of Salander and the man who has had particular cause to regret what he had done to her. Larsson has now provided us with another spectacularly nasty set of individuals, with Lisbeth’s murderous father at the centre. Gullberg makes it clear that even the very name ‘Lisbeth Salander’ instilled in him a deep displeasure, but he has also grown to loathe his charge Zalachenko. He is well aware that the latter is a ‘sick bastard’, but considers that making moral judgements is not his particular problem. In another lengthy exposition, Larsson tells us that Björck came up with a solution to the Zalachenko problem – after the latter’s attack, everyone involved in the case was to be quietly filed away with Salander committed to an institution for the insane. Björck’s boss Gullberg thoroughly approved the operation. After this filling in of the back story – actually fascinatingly handled (though there is no doubt that Larsson could occasionally be pedestrian in this kind of passage) – we are taken back to Salander in her hospital bed removing her neck brace and hunting for a weapon. We are reminded that whatever has been done to her, she remains the ultimate survivor.
Critics of the Millennium Trilogy have pointed out that Salander’s implausible capacity for survival in this final book is worthy of a super-heroine, but while the author has always maintained a level of verisimilitude, he has also tacitly requested a certain suspension of disbelief where the abilities of his heroine are concerned. And most readers who have got this far would be more than prepared to extend that suspension.
Zalachenko is moving around the room on crutches and training himself to be able to move again. Salander opens her eyes when she hears a scraping sound in the corridor and a grim thought occurs to her: ‘Zalachenko is out there somewhere’. She is still in a neck brace and finds it difficult to move. Gullberg is informed that Björck is on sick leave – and the Zala affair is still very much on Gullberg’s mind. In the department there is a discussion of Salander and her fractious relationship with her sister Camilla, who was informed that Lisbeth was violent and mentally ill. They talked about their spectacular fight. It’s known that she has attacked a paedophile and that Bjurman was Salander’s guardian. They also discuss the fact that Inspector Bublanski considers that Bjurman raped Salander – news that astonishes Gullberg. He is told that Bjurman had a tattoo across his belly which read: ‘I am a sadistic pig, a pervert and a rapist’. Gullberg shows at this point an unusual streak of black humour: ‘Zalachenko’s daughter… You know what? I think you ought to recruit her for the section.’
Ironically, these enemies of Salander are prepared to accept the truth of this incident – a fairly unusual happening given the reluctance on the part of any establishment figures to believe that Salander is anything but the violent sociopath she is portrayed as. Gullberg and his associates discuss the fact that Bjurman made a contract with Zalachenko, hoping to get rid of the man’s daughter. The Russian, of course, had good reason to hate Lisbeth, and he gave the contract to the hulking Niedermann.
At this point, Larsson takes us back to a situation which is both threatening and fraught with a certain black humour. Salander is now fully compos mentis and is discussing her condition with the doctors. She learns that her father (‘the old bastard’) is down the hall – and realises that the scraping sound she heard was that of his crutches. Zalachenko has made it perfectly clear to Gullberg that unless the whole situation involving his hated daughter is resolved, he will crack the section wide open by talking to the media. They realise that he will have to be offered something.
Interestingly, Gullberg and his colleague Sandberg now consider the real problem is Zalachenko, not Salander (who they feel they can handle). They begin to examine the other people involved in the case, including the prosecutor Ekström and the policeman Bublanski. They note the fact that the policewoman in the investigation, Sonja Modig, is something of a special case, as is the ‘tough customer’ Anderson, who was sent by Bublanski to arrest Björck. Realising that the stage management of the affair is now getting ever more complex, Gullberg finally discusses with his colleagues the troublesome journalist Blomkvist, the man who submitted Björck’s report to the police. They are aware that Salander is somehow the link between everyone, but come to no conclusions.
Larsson now details for the reader the complex strategy used by Gullberg and his associates to deal with a convoluted situation. Dissenters from the view that Larsson justifies the immense amount of attention that has been paid to him have pointed to this section of the book as needlessly complicated. But aficionados know that nothing here is overcomplicated for its own sake – all of these elements have to be put into place so that the various resolutions will have sufficient dramatic weight. One element of the plan is to bug everyone connected with Millennium: Berger (even though Erika has left the magazine), Blomkvist and his lawyer sister Giannini.
Meanwhile, the doctors have decided that Salander’s condition is stable enough for her to receive visitors. These include police inspectors, who spend 15 minutes with her – one of them is Erlander and the other Modig. Lisbeth has reluctantly agreed to be represented by Blomkvist’s sister Giannini and she is told that the police are looking for a German citizen whose name is Niedermann, wanted for the murder of a policeman. She tells them that she thinks Niedermann will go abroad. When asked why, she replies that while Niedermann was digging a grave for her, Zalachenko mentioned that things were getting too hot and that it had already been decided that Niedermann should get out of the country.
Then (just in case the reader is thinking that things are finally going well for the beleaguered Salander) she is told that her father has made a formal accusation of murder against her, and that the case is now at the prosecutor’s office. She is, in fact, already under arrest for having attacked Zalachenko with an axe. Modig leans forward to tell her that the police put no faith in the Russian’s story. This unexpected move from the police surprises Salander: her standard response to them is one of loathing, and her initial impulse to think that perhaps she has finally encountered some human beings on the force is quickly dispensed with (‘there will be some ulterior motive’ is her cynical summing up of the situation).
In Chapter 7 there is a meeting between Blomkvist and Salander’s old employer, Armansky. Those who could recollect the beginning of the very first book in the sequence will remember that it wasn’t immediately established that Salander was really the central character of the sequence (despite the fact that she is the eponymous subject of all three books – at least in the English translations of the titles). But it’s perfectly clear by this stage of the final book that everyone – including the characters – know that they are all satellites revolving around the short-tempered shooting star that is Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist says to Armansky, ‘When this is all over I’m going to found an association called “The Knights of the Idiotic Table” and its purpose will be to arrange an annual dinner where we tell stories about Lisbeth Salander.’
The object of this attention wakes up with a start in her hospital bedroom, aware that she is being watched. She sees a silhouette with crutches in the doorway. It is Zalachenko. She thinks about stretching out her arm to break off the rim of a glass – it would take half a second to push the broken glass into her hated father’s throat if he came close to her. But he quietly retreats into the corridor. Salander has a meeting with her new attorney, Blomkvist’s sister. (Blomkvist, in the meantime, is reading all he can about the secret services.) Giannini conveys a message from her brother concerning a DVD – Salander is to decide whether or not she should tell her advocate about it (it is, of course, the film of Bjurman raping Salander). Salander is instructed that she is not to say anything to anyone except her lawyer – needless to say, this is something that Lisbeth is happy to accept without question.
Some readers may be led to speculate exactly what Stieg Larsson’s view of humanity was. Certainly, the central characters of his books, including the two principal protagonists, and several of those with whom they interact, are individuals with whom the reader can, to some extent, identify – although the terrifyingly violent Salander behaves in a way that is (it has to be said) off the scale for most readers. But these relatively sympathetic individuals are far outnumbered by the unspeakable miscellany of criminals, rapists and lowlifes with which the duo are obliged to deal. Certainly, life is cheap for most of the other characters in the sequence, notably such establishment figures as Gullberg.
It is in Chapter 7 that the real ruthlessness of this character is demonstrated, in a fashion that is reminiscent of a similarly abrupt murder in James Elroy’s LA Confidential. Gullberg visits Lisbeth’s father Zalachenko and asks him if he really planned to betray them after all they had done for them. The Russian replies that he is a survivor, and does what he has to do to survive. To his surprise, Gullberg snaps back that he considers him to be evil and rotten, and that he is not going to lift a finger to help him this time. Gullberg unzips the outer pocket of his case and pulls out a nine-millimetre Smith & Wesson revolver. ‘What are you going to do with that, shoot me?’ laughs Zalachenko. And at that point Gullberg squeezes the trigger and places a bullet in the centre of the Russian’s forehead. He follows this up by placing the muzzle against the Russian’s temple and pulling the trigger twice (reasoning that ‘he wanted to be sure this time that the bastard really was dead’).
Down the corridor, Salander hears the shot, but doesn’t realise that a job she had tried to do has been finished for her by someone else. Gullberg leaves the building, making no attempt to force his way into Lisbeth’s locked room. But Larsson’s surprises for the reader in this chapter are not over. Gullberg raises the gun a final time, presses it to his own head and pulls the trigger. In fact, he does not kill himself and lies somewhere between life and death.
Blomkvist is at a coffee bar when he hears of the death of Zalachenko, and leaving his coffee untouched snatches up his laptop and rushes to the editorial offices of Millennium. He asks immediately who the killer is, but nobody as yet knows (inevitably, he will be drawing the wrong conclusion). Erlander discusses with Malmberg the identity of the murderer – a 78-year-old man called Evert Gullberg who they say is a retired tax lawyer and who has a habit of sending threatening letters to people in government (including the minister of justice). But a discussion between Gullberg’s associates has Clinton delivering some significant information about Gullberg – he points out that he has been carrying the gun around for six months. He had cancer in the stomach, colon and bladder, and his violent act was one last favour for the section. His assignment was to make sure that Zalachenko never got a chance to talk.
When Gunnar Björck hears about the shooting in the hospital, he experiences a deep panic, and realises that he is now vulnerable and exposed. He goes back to the cabin and is astonished to see that the ceiling lamp has been removed and that in its place hangs a rope from a hook above a stool. He turns round, his knees buckling beneath him and sees two men of southern European appearance. They carry him to the stool, and calmly lift him up, gripping him under his arms.
Larsson provides an interesting paragraph for the policeman Erlander, investigating the elderly man who has killed Zalachenko. He wonders if he is one of the pathologically obsessed individuals that the world appears to be full of, such as those who stalk celebrities and look for love, and when the love is not returned – as inevitably it isn’t – it turns to violent hatred. Larsson then provides a similarly dispiriting list of the stalkers and psychopaths who populate the modern world, including conspiracy theorists and those who have the gift to ‘read messages’ hidden from the world that most of us inhabit. The passage is one that has a certain strength, as one feels that these are the people who concerned the author himself, as much as the right-wing extremists who were his target when working for Expo and suchlike. It was not a comfortable world, the one inhabited by Stieg Larsson – and perhaps his creation of two characters who can (to some degree) bring order out of chaos was an attempt at some kind of amelioration of the real world in fictional terms.
Continuing the physical personal threat that is one of the hallmarks of the final book in the trilogy, there is an assault on a character who has already been threatened with a gun – Blomkvist’s sister. She arrives with a black eye and a gash above her eyebrow to tell him that her briefcase has been stolen, and it contained the Zalachenko report that he gave her. Although he says it doesn’t matter and that it’s possible to make another copy, he realises with horror that she is now a target.
Part Two of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is entitled ‘Hacker Republic’, and begins (as is customary with Larsson) with a feminist superscription, this time from an Irish law of the year 697 which forbade women to be soldiers – suggesting (as the author points out) – that women had been soldiers previously. Again we have a reference to the Amazons, almost as if Larsson thinks the reader may have forgotten this particular metaphor being conspicuously drawn for his combative heroine. It’s interesting that Larsson also speculates on the fact that the traditional image of the Amazon with the right breast removed in order to facilitate the drawing of a bow (the word literally means ‘without breast’) is not verified by any drawing, amulet or statue of a woman in a museum.
After a section in which we see Erika Berger attempting to fit in to her new magazine post, Larsson shows us Blomkvist under observation from Malm. The latter notes that Blomkvist is, in fact, clearly being tailed. In a conversation with Armansky, the journalist identifies the men who have been following him as representatives of Säpo. In the middle of the discussion between Blomkvist and Armansky there is a section in which the author’s own views are (one feels) made clear. It’s suggested that the Security Police invariably made fools of themselves – the natural order of things – and Larsson adduces for his argument examples from all over the world, such as the French Secret Police sending frogmen to New Zealand to blow up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. Blomkvist learns something useful from Armansky – the latter has a contact within Säpo who is to be trusted, and in the battle ahead, this contact will be worth his weight in gold.
If Larsson at times invites the reader to be irritated at the actions of his characters, that is nothing compared to the irritation they cause in those they interact with in the narrative. Giannini is tired and frustrated after her dealings with Salander – she knows she is hiding something, as is Annika’s brother. Giannini tries to convince her client that her constant withholding of information will mean that she will be convicted, but Salander doesn’t seem to care.
We are then given another passage in which Larsson demonstrates his mastery of the psychology of the book’s protagonist: Lisbeth examines in her own mind the effect she has on many of the people around her. It isn’t the case that she simply doesn’t care how she is received; things are more complex than that. But the element of self-loathing and self-destructiveness that was evident in the first book is still a motivator for her actions, often as powerful as her hatred of those who have set themselves against her.
Salander’s doctor, Jonasson, is visited by a man who is (he informs him) Peter Teleborian, the head physician at a psychiatric clinic in Uppsala. He was, he tells Jonasson, Salander’s psychiatrist when she was institutionalised, and the two men disagree on a diagnosis – the more sympathetic Jonasson suggests Asperger’s syndrome, but the reply is that Asperger patients do not generally set fire to their parents. The visiting psychiatrist believes her to be a clearly defined sociopath. Teleborian, however, is unable to persuade Jonasson that a visit with Salander is in order and leaves abruptly.
Blomkvist, meanwhile, is convinced that Salander is, as before, being set up for a fall and the articles he is writing for Millennium present a problem – he is not sure how to portray her in these pieces. The journalist has arranged a meeting with Idris Ghidi, a man he feels can be useful to him. The latter’s brothers were murdered by Saddam in the 1980s, along with his uncles a decade later. Blomkvist tells him that he has a job for him which is not illegal, but unusual. He tells him that he knows that one of his jobs is at the Sahlgrenska Hospital, cleaning a corridor in the intensive care unit six days a week. Ghidi nods assent to this, and Blomkvist tells him what it is that he wants him to do.
Of course, Larsson is fully aware that elements of conspiracy are de rigueur in any novel in this trilogy, and the ante is upped when Ekström continues to orchestrate a campaign against Blomkvist, based on the fact that he may reveal information about Zalachenko. He persuades others that they must do as he says in this regard, as Sweden is now in a particularly exposed position and that the fate of the country is in the hands of those who will help him silence the journalist. Even the KGB is invoked as part of the destabilising campaign supposedly orchestrated by Blomkvist and the dangerous Salander (she is considered, in colloquial terms, ‘stark raving mad’).
Bublanski learns to his dismay that the continuing investigation of Salander will be conducted by the highly inappropriate Hans Faste, and that both he and the equally untrustworthy Ekström will be handed all the information concerning her, along with the story about Björck and Säpo. Modig is as disturbed as her colleague to hear this, but they realise that their hands are tied – and that their principal job is still to find the killer.
The psychotic Niedermann has, to all accounts and purposes, vanished from the face of the earth. For some time, Larsson has been conducting his plot on the level of conversational moves and counter moves – all fascinating, but lacking the suspense generated by physical detail. This is to come – forcefully – when Ghidi, hired by Blomkvist, is to perform a series of actions outside Salander’s room, including unscrewing the screws in the cover of a vent. This is of course as an aid to communicating with Lisbeth, and to this end, Blomkvist contacts her doctor Jonasson and asks the reluctant surgeon to hear him out – he tells him that he is an investigative journalist and knows the truth about what happened to her. (He also points out that Annika, his sister, is her lawyer.)
He reminds the doctor that she has been described as a psychotic and a mentally ill lesbian mass murderer which is (as he says) nonsense. He also mentions the German Niedermann, a man without a shred of conscience who is being sought in connection with the murders. Finally, he tells the astonished doctor that the reason Salander was put into a children’s psychiatric clinic was because she had stirred up a ‘secret’ that Säpo was trying to keep a lid on – that Zalachenko, her father (who was murdered at the hospital) was a Soviet defector and a spy. He also points out that the police officer Hans Faste – who works for the prosecutor Ekström – is corrupt. In order to help her, Blomkvist needs to give her a hand-held computer and battery charger – the key weapon in her arsenal – but Jonasson is still not convinced. Then the journalist takes a folder from his briefcase and tells him some sobering facts about Dr Peter Teleborian.
Chapter 12 continues the balancing act that Larsson is able to pull off so effectively in terms of advancing his plot while making cogent political points which are clearly dear to his own heart. We meet Superintendent Torsten Edklinth who is a director of constitutional protection at the Security Police. He has known Salander’s employer Armansky for 12 years, ever since a woman MP had received death threats. Edklinth’s association with the sympathetic Armansky is, of course, something that ensures that the reader will be well disposed towards him. However, he is not prepared for Armansky ‘lobbing a bomb with a sizzling fuse’ into his lap. When the latter tells him that the Security Police are involved with straightforward criminal activity, Armansky qualifies it by saying that some people within the Security Police are involved in such activity. This leads to a section in which Edklinth has a stream of consciousness which at times seems to directly reflect its author’s opinions: ‘Swedish democracy is based on a single premise: the Right to Free Speech (RFS); this guarantees the inalienable right to say aloud, think and believe anything whatsoever’. As Larsson notes, this would also include crazy neo-Nazis – his own bêtes noires.
As a sort of ‘catch-up’, Larsson allows Edklinth a few paragraphs in which he assesses what he has been told: Security Police officers had ignored the fact that a series of brutal attacks took place against a Swedish woman (Salander’s mother), then her daughter was incarcerated in a mental institution on the basis of a fraudulent diagnosis, and finally, carte blanche was granted to an ex-service intelligence officer to commit criminal offences which involved sex trafficking and weapons. Needless to say, Edklinth is not enthusiastic about the idea of getting involved in this. He is however obliged to submit a report on the situation to a prosecutor. The woman he contacts is Inspector Monika Figuerola and she similarly regards the whole affair with horror and dismay.
Erika Berger is suffering something similar to the kind of misogynistic attacks that Salander has been the brunt of, although the attacks are in the nature of abusive e-mails. Meanwhile, Salander’s physical condition is being assessed by her doctor and he asks what she thinks of Teleborian – she replies that he is a beast. Lisbeth is soon in computer contact once again with Blomkvist, and Larsson renders their exchanges in an uncharacteristically humorous fashion (particularly at this point when the trilogy is at its darkest). There is, inter alia, a discussion of the difference between dedicated computer hackers and those who create viruses (‘hackers [are] implacable adversaries of those idiots who created viruses whose sole purpose is to sabotage the net and crash computers’) – perhaps an example of Larsson’s own credo here. The Hacker Republic who are now in touch with Salander are unknown to her, but become a useful source of information. Blomkvist tells her that the police haven’t found her apartment and do not yet have access to the DVD of Bjurman’s rape. Blomkvist doesn’t want to turn it over to Annika without her approval.
One of Larsson’s particular skills in the trilogy is the creation (one might almost say along assembly lines) of noxious villains, and another one is discovered by Blomkvist – Erika Berger’s boss is a crook, a man who exploits child labour in Vietnam. If any reader were in doubt about those whom the author regards as the lowest of the low by this point in the book, they haven’t been paying attention. Berger is informed of the situation by Blomkvist – she is, of course, shocked, and has to take seriously his suggestion that she must resign from Millennium’s board before the article is published exposing her boss, or resign from the new job (‘you can’t wear both hats’).
Salander meanwhile has enlisted the aid of her computer associate Plague (he greets her, as usual, as ‘Wasp’). She tells him she needs access to the computer of Göran Mårtensson. By the end of Part Two of the final book, Larsson has created what is undoubtedly his most labyrinthine series of plots with a rather unwieldy dramatis personae. Even the most faithful reader may feel a little tasked, but Larsson aficionados will know that he will be able to draw all the strands together.
Part Three is called ‘Disk Crash’. Once again we have a superscription, this time involving the Amazonian reign (described as a ‘gynaecocracy’), and Larsson reminds us that these women rejected marriage as subjugation, and that only a woman who had killed a man in battle was allowed to give up her virginity. The motif sounded in all the other superscriptions is, in fact, maintained here.
Erika Berger, meanwhile, continues to be the subject of a vicious assault conducted through jpeg images and Photoshop. She is sent a pornographic image of a naked woman wearing a dog collar, down on all fours, being mounted from the rear. There is a single word at the bottom of the picture: ‘whore’. This is the ninth message she has received containing this word, sent by someone at a well-known media outlet in Sweden. She is being cyber-stalked.
Intriguingly, as Larsson propels his protagonists through an increasingly baffling investigation, one of the tactics he allows his characters to employ is the analysis of faces in photos – a throwback, in fact, to the tactics used by Blomkvist in the first book in the sequence. Blomkvist is taking his investigation to the highest levels – including the Prime Minister – while Salander is finally writing a detailed journal of the abuses she has suffered at the hands of her many and varied enemies. It is a scarifying document, and something of a précis of the three novels we have been reading. Berger is now experiencing considerable apprehension, convinced that her cyber assailant is someone working for her new organisation, SMP, and enlists the aid of a bodyguard from no less than Armansky, Salander’s former employer.
Continuing the wistful theme of the attractions of mature male journalists, Blomkvist, the eternal middle-aged Lothario, has attracted yet another woman – Monika, the Säpo investigator who is working with him. She knows that he had a relationship with Salander – she points out that the young woman is Zalachenko’s daughter – but the couple agree to keep things on a friendly level despite the sexual attraction. Berger’s house, which has been equipped with surveillance along the lines suggested by her new minder, does not give her reassurance – particularly when she finds that her drawers have been rifled through and the familiar five-letter word, ‘whore’, has been spray-painted inside. Ironically, Berger finds herself with an unlikely ally – the combative Salander, who contacts her over the internet (needless to say, the psychological violence Berger is undergoing is very familiar territory for her).
There is a fascinating discussion between the two women of the nature of stalkers – Salander considers that the person tormenting Berger is like a parody of real stalkers (she, of course, knows what she is taking about). We are nearly 400 pages into the final book of the trilogy, and Larsson is still pulling off the trick of allowing Lisbeth to direct events (to a large extent) from a hospital bed. She tells both Berger and Blomkvist that the sinister Teleborian is meeting Jonas at Central Station – they only have a few minutes to get there. Jonas is, of course, an undercover agent. Blomkvist monitors the meeting. Also involved is the canny Modig, who is able to observe Teleborian having a rendezvous with a grey-haired man she has never seen before, along with Ekström. Are the men meeting to finalise the procedure for nailing Salander at her trial? Lisbeth, herself, meanwhile is still logging in to Berger’s e-mail and notices something about the company she works for – all the heads of department are men. Is one of them her stalker?
At times throughout the trilogy Larsson has played in a post-modern way with the concept that the reader is aware they are reading a fiction; he brings up the notion again in an electronic discussion between Blomkvist and Salander. She tells him that she is being moved to prison tomorrow and that Plague is helping out on the net. ‘So,’ he says, ‘all that’s left is the finale.’ The finale is, of course, the last 200 pages or so of the novel and it is undoubtedly true that, as before, Larsson is able to accelerate the tension at a steady and controlled rate. Plague tells Salander he has discovered that a man called Fredriksson, a colleague, is almost certainly the stalker – he accessed his work computer from home and Plague has found that he has pictures of Berger scanned onto the hard drive. Salander sends a succinct e-mail to Blomkvist, using his first name: ‘Mikael. Important. Call Berger right away and tell her Fredriksson is Poison Pen.’
The unpleasant Inspector Faste who was also involved in the meeting that was being monitored earlier, encounters Salander for the first time on Sunday morning when a woman police officer brings her into Göteborg’s headquarters. He has already decided that she is ‘fucking retarded’; she, meanwhile, is not even prepared to acknowledge his existence. Berger, during this time, has informed security guard Susanne Linder that Poison Pen is her stalker – Linder realises that the information could only have come from the enigmatic Salander. Unsurprisingly, Linder is later involved in a violent confrontation with Fredriksson, utilising the same uncompromising tactics that we have seen Salander use against sexual predators. She handcuffs him after knocking him to the ground.
In Fredriksson’s apartment, Linder finds incontrovertible proof on the former’s computer (while Fredriksson looks on, cursing splenetically that he is Berger’s stalker). Later, Berger is given the news and experiences a rush of relief, and she makes the decision to give Susanne Linder an expensive Christmas present. In her prison cell, Salander receives a very unwelcome visitor who greets her with a friendly ‘Hello, Lisbeth’. It is the unlikeable Teleborian. Readers who begin Part Four of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (called ‘Rebooting System’) may experience a certain twinge of regret that this will be their final encounter with the characters they have come to know so well. Once again there is a superscription involving Amazon warriors but it appears that Larsson has – largely speaking – run out of interesting things to say about them, as there is nothing that appears to illuminate the narrative we have been reading.
Chapter 23 begins two weeks before the trial of Lisbeth Salander. The case against her is closely argued and documented. The section begins with Blomkvist talking to the attractive Figuerola, telling her about his relationships with both Salander and Berger. He even admits that he is now in love with her. As we are moving towards the end of Blomkvist’s multiple conquests during the course of the trilogy, readers, both male and female, may be prepared to extend a little indulgence to him in these concluding pages. Blomkvist makes a call to another woman – one of the few who it appears is not prepared to fall at his feet – promising her an exclusive on an ‘absolutely massive story’ that he is about to break. The reader, of course, is fully aware what this is. Now begins a truly impressive task of marshalling a diverse dramatis personae to get the beleaguered Salander off the hook. All of the remaining nemeses of the diminutive computer hacker slowly become aware that a phalanx of evidence is being directed towards them, with Blomkvist as the progenitor. The battle is turning in Salander’s favour.
Desperate last-minute tactics are utilised by the Säpo heavies, including attempts to frame Blomkvist, but the momentum has shifted against them. And because such a resolution of the plot might seem a little sedate after the extreme violence of what has happened earlier in the sequence, Larsson allows violence to explode in time-honoured fashion as a burst of fire from a sub-machine gun is directed against Blomkvist. A massive struggle ensues, in the assailant is knocked unconscious.
Salander’s trial begins. Blomkvist notices a tactic that his sister Giannini has utilised – that is to dress Salander in her customary confrontational leather gear rather than trying to present her in some kind of sanitised version that the jury will be suspicious of. But there is still a considerable mass of evidence levelled against her. All of Salander’s nemeses are paraded in the court, including Zala and Bjurman, with attempts by the prosecution to whitewash the latter. And, unsurprisingly, the most damning case is made against her by the manipulative Teleborian, who calls the autobiography she has lodged with the court ‘a total fiction’. But then Giannini begins her expert demolition of Teleborian, pointing out that he began strapping down her client when she was 12 years old – at a time when she did not possess a single tattoo. All of the antisocial traits that he has criticised her for manifesting are torn away, and he begins to look both ridiculous and unprofessional. Then, the clincher: the involvement with Säpo is made clear, and the report damning Salander in the interests of protecting Zalachenko. By now, the momentum with which Teleborian’s position is being demolished is unstoppable. Giannini is even able to bring in Teleborian’s attacks on Salander’s sexuality and sexual behaviour, dispensing with those just as efficiently as she had made his earlier attacks seem less than objective. And Teleborian’s claim that Salander’s account of her rape by Advokat Bjurman is a fantasy is torpedoed when Giannini shows the judge the 90-minute film that Salander herself had made of the rape. She need only show a few short extracts – the judge instructs that the film be turned off. But the point is made. Satisfyingly, Teleborian himself is arrested – specifically for the possession of 8,000 pornographic pictures of children found on his computer. As he is led away, Salander’s ‘blazing eyes’ follow him inexorably.
At this point, Giannini suggests to the judge that her client be acquitted on all counts and released immediately – and that, further, she should be adequately compensated for violations of her rights that have taken place. Salander, as uncompromising as ever, has to be persuaded to testify after her release about the Zalachenko affair. She reluctantly agrees. Larsson now begins a satisfyingly valedictory 50 pages, in which we are given some indication of how his characters will live the rest of their lives. Giannini warns Salander that her brother is not someone to make any emotional investment in, as he has a capacity to hurt women who regard sex with him as anything more than a casual affair. Salander replies, ‘I don’t want to discuss Mikael with you.’ However, Lisbeth grudgingly acknowledges that she has at least been able to form a relationship with her solicitor, Annika, which in the younger woman’s terms is a major admission.
It’s time for Salander to begin a new life, which she does by travelling to Gibraltar, her third visit to the ‘strange rock’. She spots a big male ape climbing on a wall and says to it ‘Hello, friend… I’m back.’ The metaphor for a meeting between two creatures capable of savagery (Lisbeth knows better than to try to pet one of the apes) is apposite. Soon, she is allowing herself to get so drunk that she is falling off her stool, and approaching middle-age men, telling them that she has ‘an irresistible urge to have sex with somebody’ before giving out her room number. Naked in her room but for a bath towel, there is a knock on the door, and soon a classic Salander example of what the writer Erica Jong called the ‘zipless fuck’ is taking place. However, despite giving in to her too-long suppressed libido, Salander is also ensuring that her finances are in order. With her low boredom threshold she is soon in Paris and calling up Miriam Wu. Revealingly, she admits that she wants Mimmi as her friend.
The epilogue of Stieg Larsson’s final book is called ‘Inventory of Estate’ and begins with Giannini meeting Salander in the Södra Theatre. True to form, Lisbeth proposes a no-strings-attached sexual encounter to Annika; the latter says that she is not in the least interested – but thanks her for the offer. Salander abruptly and firmly declines to benefit from her father’s estate – she wants nothing whatsoever to do with it (‘I don’t want a single öre from that pig’). She is happy for a settlement to be made upon her sister. Larsson, however, is not quite finished with the grisly shocks that have been such a constituent element of his books.
Salander, working for Armansky again, investigates a building associated with Zalachenko and notices a nauseating stench in a workroom. She pushes a rod into a pool of stagnant water and a decomposing corpse rises to the surface. She lets the body sink back and discovers something that might have been another corpse. Then she hears a noise. ‘Hello little sister,’ says a cheerful voice. It is the monstrous Niedermann, with a large knife in his hand. He casually informs his horrified listener of all the diversionary tactics he has used since his disappearance – and he, needless to say, is responsible for the brutal murders. (‘All women were whores. It was that simple.’)
Larsson has, of course, been saving up his most powerful violent confrontation for the end of the book, and what follows is a spectacularly exciting orgy of violence in which Niedermann begins to feel that Salander is a supernatural force and a monster. With his feet nailed to the floor by his smaller opponent, he finds himself with a nail gun held to his spine, just below the nape of his neck. The suspense is rigidly maintained, as Lisbeth quickly reviews in her mind all the things that this grotesque psychopath has done. But she lowers the weapon. She tells the police where he is, and one wonders if, all along, Larsson had planned for this radical change in the modus operandi of his, usually implacable, heroine. Does this represent a humanising of her? If so, the reader might be forgiven for thinking that we have been invited to enjoy the unfettered blood-letting unleashed by his protagonist against thoroughly deserving monsters, so it is perhaps a little rich to think that we can accept her new change of heart. Nevertheless, it is a highly satisfying, almost-final glimpse of the character.
Salander is at home in the bath when the doorbell rings; she is annoyed but finds that it is Blomkvist. ‘Hello’ he says. She does not answer. He tells her that he thought she would like to know that Ronald Niedermann is dead, murdered by a gang. He had been tortured and slit open with a knife. ‘Jesus,’ replies Salander. The mob was arrested but put up quite a fight. And the biker surrendered at 6 o’clock. He asks what she was doing. ‘I was in the bath,’ she replies. He has bought bagels and some espresso coffee. What he is offering is just company. He is a good friend who is visiting a good friend – ‘If I’m welcome, that is.’ She realises that this man who has been so much a part of her life for several years is someone she knows all the secrets of – just as he knows all of hers. She also realises that she has no feelings for him – at least not ‘those kind of feelings’. And it no longer hurts her to see him.
Larsson then gives us the final line of the trilogy (as it currently exists): ‘She opened the door wide and let him into her life again.’ It is, in fact, a highly satisfying ending to the novel in every conceivable way. The reader needs this emotional release after the nigh-operatic outbursts of violence and labyrinthine plotting, counter-plotting, betrayal and deception. But it is not the kinetic diversions of the narrative that one is finally left with but the relationship between the two brilliantly realised central characters. It is a measure of Larsson’s considerable achievement that it is this emotional connection rather than all the crowd-pleasing action that is the backbone of the Millennium Trilogy.