The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz #inbetweeny

This book, written by Lagercrantz, is the fourth in the Millennium Series originally written by Stieg Larsson who died suddenly in 2004 before any of his novels reached international fame.

The Series first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Dragon) was the first book to be reviewed by Cramlington Book Club and so holds fond memories for me. I have since then read the other books in the series (The Girl who played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) and was looking forward to catching up with Salandar and Blomkvist. It had been some time since I read them and so a direct comparison with Larsson was going to be difficult but maybe that was a good thing.

Initially 'Spider' seemed to step in where 'Hornet' left off. There were the same internal/financial struggles with Millennium, Blomkvist was down and out as he was in Dragon and old faces popped up left right and centre.  

Here memory comes in to play and whilst there was a useful cast list I did struggle to recall the finer detail; was Bublanski ever so religious? I can't remember if he was but his personal crisis seemed in any event a superfluous sub plot that was resolved in a minute by a chance meeting with a member of the opposite sex.  To be continued in next book?

The appearance of some of the previous characters (for example Harriet Vanger who although wasn’t present was referenced) seemed to be more of a move by Lagercrantz to say 'I have the full cast of characters here, no-one is missing' rather than adding anything to the story.  Indeed no-one was missing but in addition to all the old faces there were many new characters all of which had job titles and were from agencies that I had never heard of before. To be fair this was a criticism with Larsson's trilogy, especially in the first book, but the nub of the motive for the murder was never entirely clear to me, so I was never entirely sure who the bad guys were in addition to 'Thanos'. Lagercrantz did try to explain the artificial intelligence involved, the various intelligence agencies, the private companies and the Spiders but there were just too many to keep track.   

I did think Lagercrantz was very clear with autism and now know what 'savant' means.  However August was a pitiful character, he was abused, he was neglected, he was used even by his 'saviour' Salandar and then his mother who was only straight because of the money (and was already displaying signs of boredom) shacked up with a man who no doubt will want to study August for his talents. His father, Balder, only seemed to  become interested in August when he showed promise, and that did seem to be underlying message of the book - August only became important/worthwhile when he displayed talents. Even Balder's murderer initially didn't kill him because he remembered that he was severely disabled (not because he was an innocent child). I was uncomfortable with this message and the overall portrayal of August.  

I didn't get Franz Balder, by all accounts he was a difficult man yet he dropped everything to rescue August only then to ignore him and place him at risk when he was warned his life was in danger. On the eve of his death he deleted his lifes work (or did he, I didn’t quite understand) and I was just left with a lack of sympathy for him. 

As for the ending, well there is another book (The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye) so a definite ending was never on the cards. I don’t want to give too much away but I guessed Thanos quite early on and was a little disappointed. One wonders how many other backstories Salandar can have to extend the series further. I was also disappointed by Levin's ending at Millennium. Lagercrantz focused in on Levin at the begin yet he didn’t really seem to get a comeuppance when everything was being tied up.

I found Zander to be too wishy washy for me to really feel any emotion, sucking up too much to Blomkvist who seemed strangely missing from the central part of the story, he didn’t drive the story like he did with Dragon. Maybe because there were simply too many characters and too much information that needed to be told by other people?
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I did enjoy the book, I liked the ending with Blomkvist and Salandar (what does the last line mean?) and I read it easily but there were times where I just couldn’t keep track of what was what which spoilt it slightly for me. I will read 'Eye' if I get the chance but I won't rush out to buy it.