The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

By Stieg Larsson
(Knopf, Hardcover, 9780307269997, 576pp.)

Publication Date: May 25, 2010

Other Editions of This Title: Mass Market Paperback (June 1, 2010), Large Print (May 25, 2010)

Categories: General

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Stieg Larsson, who lived in Sweden, was the editor in chief of the magazine Expo and a leading expert on antidemocratic right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations. He died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for this trilogy.

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Reviews from the United Kingdom:

"Fans will not be disappointed: this is another roller-coaster ride that keeps you reading far too late into the night. Intricate but flawlessly plotted, it has complex characters as well as a satisfying, clear moral thrust."
—Evening Standard
 
"Salander is a magnificent creation: a feminist avenging angel . . . I cannot think of another modern writer who so successfully turns his politics away from a preachy manifesto and into a dynamic narrative device. Larsson's hatred of injustice will drive readers across the world through a three-volume novel and leave them regretting the final page; and regretting, even more, the early death of a mastery storyteller just as he was entering his prime."
—Observer
 
"Larsson has produced a coup de foudre, a novel that is complex, satisfying, clever, moral . . . This is a grown-up novel for grown-up readers, who want something more than a quick fix and a car chase. And it's why the Millennium trilogy is rightly a publishing phenomenon all over the world."
—Guardian
 
"[The trilogy] is intricately plotted, lavishly detailed but written with a  breakneck pace and verve . . [Hornet's Nest] is a tantalizing double finale—first idyllic, then frenetic . . . Larsson has made the literary moods of saga and soap opera converge—with suspense as the adhesive. And, behind the quickfire action, those great chords of moral and political witness continue to resonate."
—Independent
 
"[These are] extraordinary novels [with] astonishing impact . . . breakneck plotting, sympathetic characterization and the kind of startling denouements that occur more frequently than is conventionally considered possible. There is a comparison with that other great work of contemporary entertainment, The Wire, in the rage and clarity with which injustice becomes the driver of a novel way of looking at a society. Be warned: the trilogy, like The Wire, is seriously addictive."
—Guardian (editorial)