The Girl who kicked the Hornet's nest

The Girl who kicked the Hornet's nest
Steig Larsson
ISBN 978-1-84916-274-6

The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson is a fascinating series of books which deserves an audience beyond the devotees of crime fiction.

The girl of the title is Lisbeth Salander. She is a victim of horrifying childhood abuse at the hands of a respectable psychiatrist. She develops skills as a computer hacker which she uses to wage a campaign against men who torture women.

The 21st century slave trade – in which girls from the former USSR are duped into working as prostitutes in Sweden and subjected to rape and torture often by respected members of society – is one of the less-documented stories of the collapse of communism loudly trumpeted by the apologists of capitalism as “the end of history.” .

The books themselves develop as exciting detective dramas with a background in fact. They talk openly about the corruption at the very highest levels in Swedish society. The author was himself a campaigning journalist who exposed the dirty work of Swedish and international capitalism.

So it is hardly surprising that Salander's co-worker is the charismatic journalist Mikael Blomkvist. He is also portrayed as being irresistible to women. You might think this is a little wish fulfilment by Mr Larssen, I, of course, couldn't possibly comment.

The links between big business, the security services and neo-nazis are explicit in the books but all under the guise of fiction of course. Stieg Larsson himself met an untimely and unexpected death. Truth really can be stranger than
fiction!

The first two books “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl who played with fire” have been turned into excellent films and I for one look forward to the film
version of this one.


Journalism (noun)
telling a story the people in power do not want to be told. Anything else is just advertising.