Lisbeth Salander is back.
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The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which goes on sale in 25 countries on Thursday and in the United States on September 1, picks up the trail of tattooed computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist. New books by writers with best-selling franchises, like Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum, often continue long after their deaths.
He has a “special talent for depicting the world of others”, said Norstedts head Eva Gedin, who edited both Mr Larsson’s and Mr Lagercrantz’s Millennium books. “(I hope) to recognise the characters, that I will still get a journey, that it will be just as exciting as the first time. And now he’s back again, sort of, his name on the cover of a fourth book, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, this one written by fellow Swede David Lagercrantz more than 10 years after Larsson died of a heart attack. But he’s best known for ghostwriting an autobiography of a popular Swedish football player that was a huge best-seller in Sweden. “If I had said no to this book, I would have regretted [it] my whole life”.
Lagercrantz says he became obsessed with writing the novel.
“Because I had to trust myself”.
“Part of me figures I’m dead”, he says. And is the decision to resurrect a well-loved character or a familiar world more about the art or the money?
“I don’t believe, I know: This is good for Stieg Larssen’s authorship”, he told CBC Radio’s q. But there is at least one person who plans to ignore it altogether.
‘I kept it on my nightstand for a week before I opened it. I was a little afraid. “A spiderweb of them”.
The book completed by David Lagercrantz was in any case completely rewritten in cooperation with the Norstedts publishing house and Larsson’s father and brother.
“They say heroes are purported to reside ceaselessly”.
We find Blomkvist facing brickbats from rival journalists criticising him that he has lost his edge and laughing at him as he dismisses online journalism.
“I came on the subway, that way I can start reading on my way home”, admitted Rickard de Boussard, 57.
Ultimately, says Gabrielsson, it is the fans who will decide the fate of this book, and perhaps future ones. Ouch. “The final verdict will have to be the readers”.
“Normally we would never speak to an author without having read the book first”. “Because none of these continuations of other people’s works have ever met the standard of the original writer, not once”.
The book has been sanctioned by the author’s father and brother and fans of the original trilogy need not fear.
Despite the overwhelming worry of failure, Lagercrantz says that being given the chance to put in writing the guide was “an unimaginable privilege, an unlimited pleasure”.
“It’s going to be really fun to read the book”.
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While Larsson did leave behind a draft for a fourth novel and synopses for several follow-ups, legal disputes meant that Lagercrantz had no access to Larsson’s drafts and instead worked from scratch to create The Girl In The Spider’s Web.
