RaveThe Pittsburgh Post-GazetteLike the first two novels, Hornet's Nest is panoramic in scope with many fascinating characters realistic and grotesque, who are enmeshed in a high-stakes struggle for power and wealth ... Mr. Larsson's narrative moves swiftly among the ever more complex plot lines, enriching the dramatic, even melodramatic, action with accurate historical details of politics, journalism and the law in his country ...an old-fashioned, well-paced political thriller with its roots in Swedish history and a cast of interesting and colorful characters ...his fictional world the good eventually triumph and the wicked are exposed and defeated. That, as Oscar Wilde observed, is why it is called fiction.
Stieg Larsson, Translated by Reg Keeland
PositiveThe Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe Girl Who Played With Fire, as long and as good as the original, follows Blomkvist and Salander, now no longer working together, as they try to expose corruption, solve murders and settle a few personal scores ...this novel makes it very clear that it is Salander, with her astonishing Internet investigations, who is the real post-modern incarnation of A. Conan Doyle's eccentric genius. She's brave. She's smart. She's even physically strong ... Indeed, it seems clear that Larsson is, in a playful way, associating Salander with another mythic character, Agent 007 ... Larsson has given his readers the ingredients for a heady literary cocktail.
Stieg Larsson, Translated by Reg Keeland
PositiveThe Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe late Stieg Larsson's first novel is a locked-room (really, locked-island) mystery in a family chronicle that expands to become an expose of international financial corruption and the problems of Swedish society ...a big, intricately plotted, darkly humorous work, rich with ironies, quirky but believable characters and a literary playfulness that only a master of the genre and its history could bring off ... Because there are many characters and the situation is complex, the narrative begins slowly, but Larsson keeps it interesting as the action accelerates to its strange and disturbing conclusion ... The minor characters and the crime itself would seem quite familiar to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, whose portraits of the corruption and amorality of the 'big rich' are certainly echoed here.
