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After brilliant start this series falters
Book Review
By Derryll White
Lagercrantz, David (2019). The Girl Who Lived Twice.
“I will be the hunter and not the hunted.” – Lisbeth Salander
David Lagercrantz has moved steadily away from Stieg Larrson’s founding trilogy in this series. Larrson had Mikael Blomkvist as a hard-core investigative journalist, infusing the stories with economics and politics that yielded an intelligent, questioning view of modern Sweden. Lagercrantz presents Blomkvist as more of a lady’s man with at least three love interests permeating the story. Where he should be central to events Blomkvist seems slightly peripheral.
Lisbeth Sander, the burning intellect and troubled soul that was Blomkvist’s alternate universe in the original trilogy, also shrinks significantly. The web of Salander’s family story attempts to make ‘The Girl Who Lived Twice’ substantive and interesting, but it eventually falters and dies, using death as the only resolution. There is a Mount Everest sub-text that brings some spark to events with the inquiry into Sherpa DNA traits, but really has little to do with the larger story.
After such a brilliant beginning I think David Lagercrantz has killed the shining light of Lisbeth Salander. I will not continue with this series.
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Excerpts from the novel:
RESPECT – “I believe that even the worst wrecks among us deserve some dignity in death.”
“Of course,” he said, to make up for his lack of sympathy a moment ago.
“Precisely,” she said, “and Sweden has always been a civilized country in that respect. But with each passing year we receive more and more bodies we don’t manage to identify, and that really upsets me. Everybody’s entitled to an identity in death. To a name, and a history.”
SPIES – Secret agents, double agents, spies, sometimes their mission from the start is to infiltrate the enemy and to continue smoke-screens. Not infrequently they are turned politically, or submit to threats or inducements.
In some cases, their ultimate allegiance is not crystal clear. Sometimes even they do not know where they stand.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
