Stieg Larsson was the second best-selling author of the world in 2008. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the third part of his Millennium series.
Violence against females is a hornet’s nest indeed, and Stieg Larsson, fortunately, does not shy away from elaborative, gory details. His suspense-crime novel, which was titled „The Air Castle That Was Blown Up” in Swedish, contains several scenes of graphic violence, just like the previous books of the Millennium series: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With the Fire.
At the beginning, Lisbeth Salander is taken to the intensive care after being shot in the head by her father and buried alive by her half-brother. She also injured her father with an axe – he ends up being hospitalised two rooms away from Lisbeth, whilst her half-brother is on the run. In the meanwhile members of the ”Section” (a part of the Sapo, Swedish Security Servise) wants to silence Lishbet and her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist. The psychiater who treated Lisbeth earlier (and who is a member of the Section himself) convinces her Prosecutor that she needs to be hospitalised again, without any trial. This is how a mental patient loses her chance to make her own decisions, as a "nice" psychiater helps her, against her will, for her own sake (?). Even if Lisbeth survives her injuries (which is doubtful), she needs to face charges of murder – and to prove that culprits of child abuse and prostitution can be found amongst influential politicians and company owners…
The Swedish crime/suspense author, at a young age, witnessed that three of his friends gang-raped a fifteen years old girl. Although he could have stopped them, he respected those friends too much to intervene on her behalf… A couple of days later he asked the girl to forgive him, which she, unsurprisingly, refused. Larsson, righteously, could never forgive himself. Besides, he wanted to be a best-selling author, and he was aware that graphic violence would sell his novels. The results are, at last, brilliantly written, disturbing, grim suspense-crime books whose protagonist is Lisbeth Salander – she was named after the real life rape victim, Lisbeth. However, Stieg Larsson died by the time the horror-suspense-crime fiction novels were published. Being a left-leaning political activist and one who openly criticised Swedish far right exremists, Larsson got several death threats, thus many people suspected that he was murdered. Actually he died from a heart attack at the age of fifty. According to Swedish law, his father and brother inherited his properties, instead of his long-time partner Eva Gabrielsson. She says she could finish Larsson’s last novel, and she has the synopses of the fifth and sixth books. However, due to the family’s resistance, these has not been finished thus far. Perhaps, hopefully, one day we may read them.
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