An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten

A collection of short stories about Maud, an 88 year old woman who lives in an awesome apartment for free (thanks dad!). She uses her age to her advantage to fool everyone around her, and if someone gets in her way? Maybe they end up dead. Maybe she's the one that kills them. Maybe this book was freaking hilarious and wonderful. :)

Pages: 173

The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz

Labeled as a 'Lisbeth Salander novel', Lagercrantz picks up the stories of the characters in the Dragon Tattoo series in what I expect will be several installments.  The plot revolves around solving a murder, the victim is involved in development of high level computer artificial intelligence, and Lisbeth had been helping him to determine who had hacked into and stolen his work, while Mikael Blomkvist was about to take his story public.  Lisbeth continues her own high level hacking, this time into the NSA files, which sets off a separate investigation. 


This new novel has an engaging plot plus some new villains and does move Lisbeth's story forward in some new directions.  It is not as complex a novel as the earlier works, but more of a fun read.  Translated from the Swedish.  400 pages

The Girl in the Spider's Web: A Lisbeth Salander novel, continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz

For those familiar with this series, it was quite a blow for the original author, Steig Larsson to pass away after completing only three novels. It was quite a coup for David Lagercrantz to be selected to continue the series.  He is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and author and has worked as a crime reporter for Expressen; he has written several novels, including the forthcoming Fall of Man in Wilmslow. Also, he worked with international soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimović on his memoir, I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović, which was short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award and was nominated for the August Prize in Sweden.
To his credit, the novel includes all of the characters and elements of the previous stories, intrigue, unpronounceable (for Americans) Swedish names and place names, technical details of computer hacking, and a cast of Russian thugs along with Bloomqvist and Salander.  While the novel does not disappoint, it also does not quite live up to Larsson's standards.  The story will hold one's attention, but, in my opinion, Bloomqvist and Salander were not up to their usual standards, and everything was resolved too neatly for my taste.  Perhaps it is better to let the series die with the original author.
416 pages, translated by George Goulding

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I confess to having read this several years back.  On second read it was easier to follow the very involved plots that follow several characters from different angles.  The 'Dragon Tattoo' series started the craze for Nordic mysteries written in a rather dark style.  Larsson has created a very unusual heroin in Salander, a tough chic, regarded as somewhat slow because of her extreme introversion, who is an expert computer hacker. She is just 5 foot tall, tends to dress in Goth style, and quite able to fend for herself.  She makes a living as a contract investigator for a security firm. The story involves solving two sets of mysteries at once - the first, the disappearance and possible murder of an heiress to an industrial empire who disappeared forty years ago.  The second is a more mundane uncovering of crime and misdeeds by a respected financier.  Both stories revolve around Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and founding co-editor of a leading financial journal, who has been convicted of libel related to the second mystery. Salander is called on to assist Blomkvist with the investigation of the disappearance, and is integral to uncovering key facts about the long-dead case.  She then also puts her skills as a hacker to work on the investigation of the financier. A fare share of violence and sexual abuse; definitely NOT a cozy mystery.  Well-written, if a bit slow paced at times.  644 pages, paperback. 

The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Steig Larsson

I'm catching up with Margaret, Ann and Barbara on this series. I liked this continuation of the story, but the violence makes me cringe. Lisbeth's skills are impressive, and the ending has me wanting to find out how things end for Salander and Blomkvist.
audio: 18.5 hours
text: 724 pages