The final volume of the Millennium series by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson is finally about to be published in the United States. This is an interesting point in time to reflect a little on the strange and intriguing success of this series.
It is truly a remarkable story, about the author who sent three books to a publisher, was accepted but did not live to see his books in print and witness their remarkable success. First came two exceptional books – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.
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Both are books full of suspense and excitement, with multiple stories running parallel to one another. Each with a great ending, but each also with loose ends. And both ending in cliffhangers, making readers want to run to the bookstore to get the next in the series immediately. Then a third novel is published – a firecracker of a book, and one which ties it all up. Properly. And more than properly.
It took less than a year for the Stieg Larsson flu to spread all over Scandinavia. It was much, much more contagious than the swine flu! The books were virtually hot from the presses when people bought them – only the Bible has sold more than Stieg Larsson to the peoples of the North, the gloomy descendants of the Vikings, and the presses could hardly keep up. And it is not that those folks aren’t used to great crime fiction – after all, Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Mankell, Fossum, Nesbo, and a bunch of other pretty OK crime writers are from the same neck of the woods.
It is because this series, the Millennium trilogy, was something more than they were used to, something very remarkable – an engaging story with engaging side-stories within the stories, with extraordinarily fascinating and thoroughly modern heroes – perhaps especially the heroine, Lisbeth Salander. And – the icing on the cake – it is a series of books actually dealing with issues considered important and real, and doing it in a compassionate and reasoned way, with the Davids – the outsiders, people almost like you and me – giving the Goliaths, or the powers that be, visible or not, some mighty knacks on their heads.
So the series rolled out into the world. First the Scandinavian countries, then Germany, and then into France, Italy, Spain – and was a huge hit everywhere. It is hard to explain how it could be successful in all of these very diverse settings. It must reside somehow in the compassion inherent in Larsson’s writing – his honest, very concerned voice and the modern hero figures. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist and the others are modern characters – skilled, smart, use the net, can do some hacking, and use the modern devices of our age to their advantage.
And now, several years later, the Millennium fever hits the English speaking world as well – as the last of the major languages, partly due, I think, to the xenophobia and incompetence of American publishers. Last year Mr. Larsson from Sweden (who had heard of him in 2004?) was the second best selling author in the world! It started slowly, but now with The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest it’s taking off. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is 
an incredibly worthy successor to the previous two books in the trilogy, excellently conveyed to English readers by the translator, Reg Keeland. It is the book that ends the story as well as the stories within the stories. It brings them to a conclusion so gratifying that it made me ponder and experience a kind of grief and sadness in me, for the writer, the maker of these wonders, who will write no more.
Praise:
“the completion of the trilogy confirms Larsson as one of the great talents of contemporary crime fiction” — Joan Smith, The Sunday Times
“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 . . . 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
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