BOOKS: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson (2007/US 2010)

Third and final volume in the ridiculously successful trilogy of crime novels.

And this one makes it abundantly clear that this really was a trilogy. The first two volumes may have had their mysteries to keep us occupied, but what the series has really been about is the life of Lisbeth Salander, Larsson's prickly young computer hacker.

It continues to be a marvel that Larsson can not only make a heroine out of a character who's this antisocial and damaged, but make her the protagonist of a thriller even when she spends much of the book kept out of the action. Lisbeth spends more than two-thirds of Hornet's Nest in the hospital, recuperating from the wounds she suffered at the end of the previous book.

When the stories of the three novels are as tightly wound as they are here, it's a little difficult to say much about #3 that won't spoil #1 and #2 for those who haven't read them yet, but this one makes it clear that Salander isn't nearly as paranoid as her enemies portray her, and that the crimes against her have been going on for a very long time, and have been authorized at a surprisingly high level. High enough, actually, that a fairly hefty suspension of disbelief is required; the involved conspiracy that Larsson has concocted here is wildly implausible, and he gets away with it only because of his immense skill at keeping the story moving briskly ahead.

How he does that is beyond me, because he's guilty of some clunky writing along the way. Every outfit and every bit of food someone eats is described in great detail -- they get more attention than a lot of the characters do -- and he has the terrible habit of maintaining suspense by keeping us ignorant in a very showy way; there are far too many scenes that start with a bit of small talk, then end with something like, "Mikael sat down and explained his plan." ("But I'm not going to tell you silly readers what the plan is, so there, nyah nyah nyah!")

And yet, Salander is so fascinating a character, and her battle against overwhelming forces is so compelling, that I couldn't stop reading; I zipped through the book in two days. Larsson had reportedly planned a ten-volume series before his death (I hope his publishers will have the decency not to foist any uncompleted manuscripts on us, or, even worse, hire some hack to "finish" them), and it's a shame that we won't get to see what he had in mind. But on their own, the three books we've been given are a remarkable accomplishment.