A once-great Scandinavian noir series now produces more yawns than spills and thrills.
Lisbeth Salander is back. She’s cold, lethal, and remorseless—and that’s on her good days.
“Vigilance comes as naturally to Lisbeth as eating, shitting and sleeping.” So writes Smirnoff, picking up the posthumous Stieg Larsson franchise where David Lagercrantz left off. Normally glued to a computer, Lisbeth is up in the woodsy far north of Sweden. Bad doings, naturally, are afoot, most caused by what’s surely the only thalidomide-baby villain in literary history. Using a wheelchair doesn’t keep our bad guy from dastardly deeds. For one, he’s trying to steal the Arctic out from under its rightful owners so that he can put up wind turbine farms—though, as it happens, he really has a more combustible and internationally interdicted form of energy in mind. When not occupied with Lex Luthor–worthy schemes, our villain has a penchant for kidnapping youngsters, some to kill, some to rape, some to hold hostage. Lisbeth’s on the case for a couple of reasons, not least connecting with a niece, daughter of the brother she snuffed a few books back. (“Did you kill him?” asks the young niece. “In a way,” Lisbeth answers.) Another is to help intrepid Larsson stand-in Mikael Blomkvist, who's at loose ends since his magazine Millennium folded. His sister and brother-in-law implicated by accident and by design in all these malevolent happenings, Blomkvist heads north to dig into the story, one punctuated by neo-Nazis, bikers, drug smugglers, and other such quotidian villains. Things turn ugly fast and stay that way; only the name-checked Greta Thunberg, it seems, has much chance of surviving once the hand grenades start flying. One decidedly bad but more mobile character memorably tosses the corpses of his victims out to be cleaned by sea eagles. One wonders whether the publishers aren’t doing the same thing, gnawing every last ounce of Larsson’s original to the bone.
A once-great Scandinavian noir series now produces more yawns than spills and thrills.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780593536698
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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