Contains spoilers for the end of book 2

I have to thank my friend Maria (of Bogormen) again for sending me the UK edition of the third book, which arrived on about the same day as it was released in hefty and expensive hardcover here - I love the book-blogging community; we're all so keen for each other to read our favourite books we'll happily supply the drugs books for each others' habit! This edition doesn't match the elongated mass market paperbacks of the previous two that I have, but that's okay. One detail I noticed just yesterday though: the UK edition uses hornets', while the US uses hornet's. Since the direct English translation of the original Swedish title is The Castle in the Cloud that got Blown Up (thanks again, Maria!), it must come down to a simple preference on the part of the publishers. Still, I can't help but be interested in these little details.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest picks up exactly where The Girl Who Played With Fire left us, with Lisbeth Salander riddled with bullets, Zalachenko the ex-Russian spy with half his face hacked off, the blonde giant Niedermann on the run, and Mikael Blomkvist, journalist and co-ownder of Millennium magazine, trying to explain to the police the true story of Lisbeth's past.

With a bullet in her brain, Lisbeth and Zalachenko are both taken to the same hospital. The secret select club within the Security Police - Säpo - that ran the whole Zala operation and saw to it that Lisbeth was locked up in a mental institution, will do everything they can to make sure the truth doesn't come to light, and that Lisbeth gets up away for good this time. Their old leader, Evan Gullberg, comes out of retirement to sort things out. But Mikael starts his own investigation and begins spying on the spies, creating a head-to-head race to save or damn Lisbeth Salander.

This one started out rather slowly, like the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo did, and I stuttered in my reading of it after the first 100 pages because by the end of book 2 we know who did it and why, so it's like there's no mystery anymore and hence no motivation to keep reading. After a while, though, the pace picked up and it got interesting again. Yes, we know they what and the why and the who, but not how Lisbeth is going to win her court case, or oust the Section (the group within Säpo that wants her locked up), and there's a few little side-plots to flesh things out further, like Erika Berger's new job.

You might not like Larsson's penchant for details, or for detailing people's movements (I do), but you've gotta hand it to him: he's consistent. Or was. The poor bloke died of a heart attack in 2004, at only fifty years old, before being able to complete the fourth book. Turns out he had plans for a 10 book series. Either way, at least this trilogy is complete in itself - not to mention a publishing boon. I also read that in 2008 he was the second-biggest selling author in the world, behind Khaled Hosseini (I didn't know that about Hosseini either). But I digress.

There's not as much of Salander in this third outing, but there's more Blomkvist than in book 2. The characters don't particularly grow any further than they did by the end of the last book, but by now we know them, are familiar with their habits and feel comfortable with them - and sympathy for them. There are new characters, lots of them, and I find that Larsson's repetition of key little facts here and there really helps you keep up with them all. Especially considering the size of these books. I think book 2 is still my favourite, but I really enjoyed them all - not just for the personal stories, the stories of the characters, but for what the novels say about politics, corruption, freedom of the press and other relevant issues.