‘The Girl in The Spider’s Web’ by David Lagercrantz | Book Review

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium ‘Trilogy’ has set some insanely high standards in the crime mystery/thriller genre, maintaining which would’ve been one strenuous task. David Lagercrantz, a journalist by profession, took upon himself the responsibility of continuing the series, and even though the pair of shoes he put in were too huge for his size, he managed a decent walk through the park.

All’s not well at Millennium, and its founder Mikael Blomkvist, tired of searching new scoop that can sail the magazine’s boat again, binges on crime novels. A call from an expert on Artificial Intelligence, Frans Balder, finally gets him going, and a while later we are made known that both Blomkvist and Salander are working on the same case. The novel takes its sweet time in establishing the connection, and the two come together again to wage a major war against corruption (yet again!), and we get to revel under 400+ pages of criminal brilliance.

The major characters are all same, and David has made some very important character additions in Frans Balder and his autistic son August, who possesses super-human intelligence and creates drawings which prove to be of extreme importance in the plot. It’s the communication between this child and Salander that pushes the plot ahead, and tension slowly escalates to unite Salander and Blomkvist. It’s quite a delight to witness the return of officers Sonja Modig and Jan Bublanski, who is now promoted as a chief inspector. The other new important characters in the book include a young journalist Andrei Zander; an assassin who prays before he shoots; an unsuccessful actor Lasse Westman; and ‘Thanos’, a character who figures in Salander’s past.

This here is a sharp thriller. The author has heavily relied on research to back up the facts on AI. At places the book gets too heavy with tech-jargons, which the author details in length thus pacing down the narrative way too much. Where Larsson had a nonconformist approach to his writing, Lagercrantz is a bit conventional. He offers a compact read of things, but maintains the simmer in plot-building as Larsson, takes it slow and steady and lets the growing heat burst the bubble towards the end. He pays a rich tribute to Larsson’s earlier works in this book through direct references one just can’t miss.

The book’s an intelligent standalone read, and the way it has ended, one can very much rest assured that there are the web shall indeed attract many more continuations. And we’re SO looking forward to them.

Overall Rating : 4/5

You may purchase the book here –   and from here.

GIVEAWAY

Indian Nerve along with Hachette India, as part of an ongoing blog tour, is hosting a giveaway where the winners shall receive the entire Millennium series including The Girl In A Spider’s Web, apart from one other book of winner’s choice from below. That’s right, every winner shall win 5 books in total (Please note: This giveaway is for Indian readers only)

• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
• Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
• The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy
• An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy
• Rescue by Nicolas Sparks
• Under the Dome by Stephen King
• Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Elephant Catchers: Key Lessons for Breakthrough Growth by Subroto Bagchi
• In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce
• Living History by Hillary Clinton
• To The Moon and Back by Jill Mansell
• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Theodore Boone,Kid Lawyer by John Grisham
• One Day by David Nicholls
• The Devotion Of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
• Between The Lines by Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer and Yvonne Gilbert
• The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R.Carey

Enter the giveaway here :

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