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Salander returns in riveting 'Spider's Web'

Patrick Ryan
USA TODAY
"The Girl in the Spider's Web" by David Lagercrantz.

Rest easy, Lisbeth Salander fans — our punk hacker heroine is in good hands.

Since inking their way into the cultural zeitgeist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels have sold 80 million copies worldwide and spawned popular Swedish and American film adaptations. So it was little surprise when a new installment was announced earlier this year, despite original author Stieg Larsson's death of a heart attack in 2004 and speculation about a half-finished, unpublished fourth book.

Naturally, some Millennium trilogy readers may approach The Girl in the Spider's Web (**** out of four stars, on sale in the USA on Sept. 1) with cautious intrigue — after all, a character as audaciously complex as Salander can't be entrusted to just anyone. But Swedish crime novelist David Lagercrantz takes the reins with prowess, not only mimicking Larsson's shamelessly pulpy prose, but admirably expanding the deliciously depraved world of the novels.

Set a few years after The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest — in which Salander was cleared of murder charges and reconciled with onetime lover Mikael Blomkvist — Spider's Web picks up with a crumbling Millennium magazine, no longer an apex of muckraking reporting. Blomkvist hasn't landed a big scoop since the Harriet Vanger exposé in Dragon Tattoo and is considered out-of-step with modern journalism (he's even inspired a mocking Twitter hashtag, #inblomkvistsday).

But the gruff newsman isn't washed up for long. Late one night, Blomkvist is urgently called to the home of scientist Frans Balder, only to find him shot in cold blood and his mute, autistic son the only witness to the murder. From there, Blomkvist reconnects with Salander and enlists her hacking finesse to uncover why someone would want to kill Balder, a tortured father and developer of artificial intelligence.

What transpires is a twisty, bloody thrill ride as a larger conspiracy unravels, involving the NSA, Russian mobsters and Salander's estranged twin sister, Camilla. All of which is seamlessly woven together by Lagercrantz — in fact, if you hadn't seen his name on the book jacket, you'd likely assume it was Larsson's own handiwork.

David Lagercrantz has written a new novel in Stieg Larsson's Millennium series.

Like Larsson, Lagercrantz throws brevity to the wind as he lays out the mechanics of the plot and details everyday minutiae (in case you'd forgotten, Salander still loves her frozen Billy's Pan Pizzas). But the book becomes an instant page-turner midway through, when Salander sets off with Balder's autistic son, August, and helps him hone his savant talents (equations and mathematically precise drawings) in an effort to track down his father's killer.

Lagercrantz's real triumph is the care with which he handles Salander, whose vengeful, unsettling demeanor could easily become a caricature of Larsson's original creation. With Spider's Web, Lagercrantz manages to get further under her skin and deepen her backstory, revealing more about her tragic upbringing and abusive father (a criminal kingpin). And it's impossible not to crack a smile as she brutally cuts "men who hate women" down to size — an empowering Salander through-line in the series.

Like its predecessors, Spider's Web's central whodunit is wrapped by the end, although certain characters' fates (and Salander and Blomkvist's relationship) are left open-ended. With any luck, Lagercrantz is already firing up his tattoo gun for the next spellbinding adventure.

The Girl in the Spider's Web

By David Lagercrantz

Knopf, 416 pp.

4 stars out of four

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