by 
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy comes to a grinding halt with the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I really enjoyed the cold, dark, Swedish landscape in the first book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The series then turned into an action thriller with The Girl Who Played with Fire. This third book comes across as police and courtroom procedural.
I’m not going to say too much about the book because it would be a spoiler for this book, as well as for the first two books. The character of Lisbeth Salander is fascinating and the highlight of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The rest of the characters are fairly cardboard if not caricatures.
If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then you liked the characters. That book has a clear ending and you can move on with your literary life. If you wonder what happens next with these characters then you will want to read The Girl Who Played with Fire. If you read that book you know that it does not have a clear ending. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the second half. And it’s the boring half.
The book is largely focused on a trial and investigation leading up to the trial. It comes across as a boring episode of Law Order with Swedish names.
A disappointing third chapter of the trilogy.
