‘The Girl in the Spider's Web’ by David Lagercrantz

Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding

Published by Maclehose Press,
7 April 2016.
ISBN: 978-84866-778-5

Scientist Frans Balder works in the U.S.A for a firm called Soliton specialising in computer games etc. His particular authority is in artificial intelligence. He has an autistic son August, living in Stockholm with his mother and her partner and out of the blue Balder decides he should take more responsibility for his son. He decides to go and pick him up and get him to live with him in Stockholm. At the same time he takes all the work he has been developing at Soliton with him, he fears the firm's computers have been hacked and was taking no chances.

Balder contacts Mikael Blomkist and arranges for him to come and see him, he wants Mikael to publish his story in his magazine Millennium as he is sure someone is after his discoveries, and he is starting to fear for his life.

Mikael and Lisbeth Salander team up once again to find who is behind the cyber crimes taking place. Lisbeth herself also becomes a target for the ruthless criminals and it takes all their combined ingenuity to find who is behind it. They believe it is someone by the name of Thanos, thought to be a woman, but who is she?

Unexpectedly their discoveries lead to finding corruption in very high places and Lisbeth and Mikael have many a close shave before bringing down some big names.

Being an avid fan of Steig Larsson's Millennium series, I was glad to see someone carrying on with the stories of Mikael and Lisbeth. This was a cleverly thought out plot, although I found a lot of the references to algorithms, eliptic curves and prime number factorization rather beyond me!

I am sure there will be another book to follow as the ending left scope for a continuation of the exploits of Lisbeth and Mikael. I look forward to it.

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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

David Lagercrantz  was born 4 September 1962, in Sweden. He is a Swedish journalist and best-selling author, internationally known as author of Zlatan Ibrahimović's biography I am Zlatan Ibrahimović and as the current writer of the Millennium series, originally by Stieg Larsson.

www.davidlagercrantz.s

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf  (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.