In David Lagercrantz' continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, Lisbeth Salander has disappeared. She's sold her apartment in Stockholm. She's gone silent electronically. She's told no one where she is. And no one is aware that at long last she's got her primal enemy, her twin sister, Camilla, squarely in her sights.
In David Lagercrantz ’s The Girl Who Lived Twice, Swedish IT wizard Lisbeth Salander is paired, as usual, in a mutually advantageous partnership with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist ... it’s a murder mystery inside an espionage conspiracy wrapped in an action thriller—a unique concoction that should leave Salander’s legion of followers clamoring for more.
While Lagercrantz’s prose is more serviceable than the peculiarly clodhopping original writing, by this point the main characters have, sadly, become subject to the law of diminishing returns – in particular Salander, who is now just another all-purpose kick-ass heroine; despite the all-guns-blazing ending, there’s a half-heartedness to the story of her continued battle with twin sister Camilla. Far more intriguing, despite its unlikely beginnings, is the investigation into an ill-fated Everest expedition, although the necessity of shoehorning the narrative into the Millennium framework distances the action, thereby lessening its dramatic impact.
Salander is less physically present this time — and that’s too bad, because she’s fascinating ... I wish I could report that I was gripped by all this, but not really. The novel meanders annoyingly, with Salander appearing only intermittently to lend Blomkvist mainly technical support ... All of this unfolds with prose that is borderline stilted and with major and minor plot turns that make little sense ... it’s just mighty peculiar ... Readers who are ambivalent about the violence and gore that are part and parcel of so many Scandinavian mysteries these days needn’t worry too much about The Girl Who Lived Twice.
