The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

*************THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW****************

The last of the Millenium Trilogy & the last penned by Larsson before he died.

The climax of The Girl Who Played With Fire has Zalachenko, Lisbeth's father, shooting her.  In a trilogy concerned with hard-core misogyny, so the father trying to kill the daughter carries that theme about as far as it can go.  And Larsson pulls no punches in that scene - it is violent, cold, and horrible.  To highlight what I mean - once her father and half-brother have buried Lisbeth (not knowing she's still alive), a fox comes over to the newly disturbed earth and pisses on it.  The world seems to have no use for Lisbeth Salander.

It was difficult to conceive of how Larsson was going to proceed from the final scene of the second novel.  Lisbeth's story seemed pretty complete - she had recovered from her tryst with Blomkvist, become financially independent, returned to Sweden and set up a new home for herself, discovered who she came from and, finally, had fought back against the father who had killed her mother.  Also, she and Blomkvist finally reunite after spending all of The Girl Who Played With Fire in different places.  The one issue brought up in the second book that is not really resolved by its end is the media war against Salander.  By the end of Fire, all of Sweden had assumed that she murdered the two reporters, her old guardian, and was exactly what the media labeled her as: a violent, mentally unbalanced, lesbian psycho who was capable of anything.   Essentially, in Fire, Salander is living in a country that is seeking her arrest and presupposes her guilt.  The police force doesn't even seek other suspects.  She avoids detection, but a lot of articles are written about her and why she committed the murders she's accused of - her reputation is destroyed. 

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest backtracks to that - Salander is no longer on the run & existing outside of society.  She has been captured and now her country is putting her on trial and the trial is rigged.  The verdict is a foregone conclusion because Salander's opponents are powerful policitical figures who will stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden and the prosecutor has aligned himself with them and seeks to get Lisbeth committed to the psych ward. 

Lisbeth's opponents are members of the Section, a rogue section of the Swedish intelligence agency otherwise known as, Säpo.  The Section benefited from secrets Salander's father revealed when he defected to Sweden during the Cold War.  Salander cannot be allowed a fair trial without exposing the existence of this rogue section and the unconstitutional deeds it has committed.  The rights of a individual are nothing compared to hiding/maintaining these secrets.  That is the horror explored in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. 

So, Salander can no longer escape what she has been ignoring/evading/trying to rectify through illegal methods.  She is now at the mercy of "social justice."  Can society at large deliver that justice?  What are the limiting factors? The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest explores that in various ways:

• Who monitors the intelligence agencies? Are they held accountable to any higher authority?

• what society can label you as based on your behavior/circumstances

• how society is capable of assuming the worst of its "minorities" while failing to question the motives of its established, sanctioned and powerful authorities

• Journalism as a watchdog in a healthy democracy exposing errant corporate/political/medical/radical/policing interests and advocating for transparency.  Also, how much misinformation exists in our media?  How does that happen and how can we protect the media from inaccuracies?

• How can the individual censure an authority when the formal channels for doing so are designed to help that authority avoid censure of any kind?  Is there any legal way to reproach the system - or is Salander correct that hacking/spying/beating the system at its own game is the only way to bring the powers-that-be to justice?

                              ***On that final point, Blomkvist is a good measure.  He begins the series with faith that journalists can expose the truth.  By this book - when he realizes that the Section is bugging his apartment and will use any means necessary to destroy him/Salander/the Truth - he is a proponent of the "spread of misinformation."  In other words, Blomkvist is willing to create the wrong impression, willing to lie, and willing to resort to illegal methods.  This trilogy began with his banishment for writing a story that was inaccurate, and by this book he is allowing the publication of untruths in his own magazine, Millenium.

Consequently, I felt that this book had a lot more of Larsson himself than just a satisfying fictional narrative.  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest brings in more of his conclusions/philosophy than the other two books and I think that was the strength/weakness of this novel.  A reader can see the social consciousness and aspiration to truly strive for a well-functioning democracy in this book.  But there is also a lot of pessimism, paranoia, and conspiracy theorizing in it as well.  For me, it was too heavy handed in many places and deviated from its strength - substantial characters and telling their stories.  By the end of the trilogy he began speaking a little too directly to the reader instead of writing the story of these fictional people.

While I see that as a downside to this book I still feel I can appreciate it because these are issues that we should all be concerned about.  If we're living in a democracy that is actually deceiving its members and is more concerned about protecting its secrets from its own constituents than we are all living in a lie.  And what should concern any of us more than that?  It reminds me of a lyric from an Eminem song, "Medicine Ball."  The lyric is, "Let's begin, now hand me the pen/how should I begin it and where does it all end/the world is just my medicine ball you're all in/my medicine ball, you're in my medicine ball, friends."   To be in a sphere where every point is manufactured by the powers that be and where every point is a lie.  

One final point of criticism about this book, it refers to events in Swedish history and uses them in the plot.  Anyone unfamiliar with Swedish history will be confused and forced to find background information on the people and events referenced by Larsson.  The book might have benefited from footnotes or endnotes.