The Girl in the Spider's Web

Review

Girl in the Spider's Web is the forth book in the Millennium Trilogy. I'm tempted to stop right there as I feel like that sentence sums things up nicely. But I'll go on. Stieg Larsson died at 50 shortly before his dark Swedish crime novels were published and hit it big in America. It's important to remember how big they were, dominating the NYT Bestseller lists and spawning a trilogy of movies in Sweden and America. Well, spawning a trilogy of movies in Sweden and an abortive attempt at one from Hollywood. Flash forward eight years and Web is released. The author of this continuation of the series is David Lagercrantz, another Swedish journalist turned novelist. That selection was successful. Web feels very much like a continuation of the series. Lagercrantz makes a very good approximation of Larsen's style. And that is as much a curse as a blessing. I read the Millennium trilogy when it came out and I found it quite enjoyable. However I think that it probably has not aged well. Many of Larson's bad habits like name-dropping various brands, almost-believable technobabble, and self-insertion of the World's Greatest Journalist (tm) are maintained. I think this book will prompt me to go back and re-read the first three books of the series, I'm interested to see if they grate in the same ways this does. Which is not to say the book is irredeemable. I think the book's plot is something that Larsson could have come up with if he had not died. It's very much focused on technology and government surveillance, relevant themes in 2015. But it also focuses on government complicity with criminals which is a driving force of the first three novels. I think on those fronts the book succeeds. However where it shows greatest weakness is in its breadth. The cast feels needlessly large, the conspiracy simultaneously too focused and too broad. It's a world-spanning story set over a couple days in Stockholm. I think a more imaginative writer could pull it off but Lagercrantz feels very mechanical in his approach to the story. His emulation of Larrson's technical style carries over to the characters and plot of the book. It feels like Lagercrantz had a checklist and is ticking off boxes for having old characters and themes appear. Bloomquist has never felt so useless, he's just in the story to relay phone calls and then write The Best Story of the Year. A character in the book reading that story cries, overcome by this triumph of journalistic masturbation. But for all that I can't hate the book. I found it enjoyable. It lacks that special something the original books had a decade ago but it was still an enjoyable read. Not quite the page-turner it wanted to be but still a fairly engrossing tale of gangsters and hackers. If you liked the previous books and are okay seeing their flaws magnified I'd recommend it.

Consumption history1

1. Unknown

   Completed★ 3 / 5

   physical