The latest book in the Lisbeth Salander series is the second by David Lagercrantz and was not my favorite. My favorite remains the first story, but I’m starting to worry that we’re going to see a sharp drop in quality the farther out we get from Stieg Larsson’s death.

We do learn some interesting information about Lisbeth’s past, and we do watch her (from prison for her activities in the previous book) and Mikael Blomkvist solve a mystery and a crime.

There are basically two stories going on. One is about Lisbeth and the system she was brought up in after her abuse. This involves a complex social project called “The Registry” which sounded super sketchy and had something to do with separating gifted twins. Lisbeth and Blomkvist figure out that a wealthy businessman Leo Manneheimer is not actually Leo Manheimmer and the story that entails.

The other story is about a prisoner Lisbeth is trying to protect from another violent prisoner. Lisbeth is convinced the prisoner she is protecting doesn’t belong in prison, and there’s a mystery being solved there as well.

It was entertaining enough. It just wasn’t as good the previous installments.

The pacing was off, compared to previous novels, and Salander wasn’t actually in a lot of the book. Plus she was in prison a lot of the time. Langercrantz spent a lot of time on characters he created for the book, which I guess is ok, but not really why I read them.

I hope the next installment is better.

Tagged: authors: david lagercrantz, authors: stieg larsson, books: the girl who takes and eye for an eye