Review: Millennium Trilogy Books 2 and 3

I have finally finished reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy that began with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The time it took was not because I found them a hard slog, but time and place intervened. I like to take disposable books with me when I’m on holidays and the trilogy are books I want to keep.

The first book, which I reviewed along with the Swedish film, could be a stand alone. Its story is very much about the Vanger Corporation. Characters – both individual human beings and corporations – are introduced. There are some hints of situations and facts about some of those characters that will become important in the last two books, but, really, aside from some mysteries about Lisbeth Salander, there no real need to pick up the last two.

However, you do need to have read the first one to read and fully enjoy the last two, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. The last two books depend on each other, too. Book 2 ends with a cliff hanger; Book 3 picks up right where Book 2 left off.

Book 2 begins with Salander pissed off with Blomkvist, though really at herself for falling for him and then seeing him with Berger. Through a neat bit of hacking to bring down Wennerström, the industrialist nemesis of the first book, Salander is rich. Very rich. She’s also dealt with her guardian, Advokat Bjurman, so he ceases to be a problem for her. She goes to the Caribbean.

This is a fascinating character portrait of Salander, though she remains enigmatic and troubled. The lengthy passage does nothing to add to the plot, and perhaps would have been lost in a judicious edit. That, I think, would have been a shame. It’s an engrossing vignette of a Swede abroad and her interactions with black and white, as well as giving us more of an insight into her extreme complexities. Salander is not an easy woman to get to know, or like. As I alluded to before, in a way she veers between being a ridiculous caricature to someone who is fundamentally different to most other people. And dreadfully misunderstood, which sounds too pat to do these books justice.

In Sweden, Blomkvist is back at Millennium working on a story to do with human trafficking and corruption. Some other investigative journalists have made contact with a story that is just right for the magazine. Things are going well, and then they get murdered. The police immediately suspect Salander due to circumstantial evidence. She’s back in Sweden, avoiding Blomkvist, and enjoying sex and a relationship with the wonderful Miriam Wu. The police and judge get things horribly wrong, accusing Salander of being an insane killer. There’s a national hunt on, and during the events Blomkvist comes to realise that Salander is caught up in the entire deal, but perhaps not quite in the narrative everyone – even he – thinks until quite late into the second book. In fact, while he’s the one who perhaps comes the closest to unravelling the whole story, I’m not sure he has got it entirely right. And that is, I think, one of the true complexities of these books.

The bare bone facts are that Salander is the daughter of a state secret that turned very, very embarrassing and has to be covered up at all costs. The obvious heart of the novels is the theme about the Swedish view of human rights and the balance of that against such national secrets. Larsson is blatantly on the side of human rights, which is not a bad thing, of course, but the third book does lecture the point somewhat.

The prose is generally not good, but I do still think this is from a decently written manuscript delivered and not really edited given the author’s untimely death and his standing in Swedish publishing. The English translation, which is what I have read, is again decent, but suffers also from not being well edited. It’s not bad, as such, but it is well below what it perhaps should be and could have been. Perhaps for those reasons if you don’t want to slog through the books, on the strength of the first Swedish film, do go see the Swedish versions of the other two parts of the trilogy.

All in all, a very good read. Salander is an amazing character who rightly generates a lot of discussion. There is a fair bit that remains ambiguous, but sign-posted.

(I shall add a review of the films once I catch up with all of them.)