The Girl In the Spider’s Web

 The Girl In the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz       AudioBook: 13hrs, 30 min          Library Binding: 544 pages                         Genre:  Adult Fiction     Suspense,    Superhackers,  Autism,  Savauntism

This is the fourth book in the Millenium Series, which began with the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.   Seems she has another tattoo – that of a spider which designates her to be one of a super sleuth group of superhackers that find their way in to most any system in the world they choose.    However, Salander or WASP as she is known in the hacker network is the most super of the superhackers and she breaks the code on information that has government, spies and super criminals wanting to catch her each with their own agenda.    A lot of Salander’s background is given as trackers on both sides (good and evil) go on quests to discover who WASP is and then to pierce her shields to find out not only who she is but every bit of information on her that they can.    Seems her childhood was dysfunctional to the extreme, her father is a brutal Russian crime boss who beats her mother to a pulp every time he comes home which fortunately isn’t every night but when he does come home, he is usually drunk and continues to drink throughout dinner and into the night at which point he gets even uglier disposition-wise he starts by making cracks about his young daughters asking his favorite why she is so beautiful and her sister so hideous looking and other verbal assaults.   Then he would lock the girls in their bedroom where they were forced to listen to their mothers screaming in pain and hear the sounds of his fists punching her in the face and all over her body.   As she would be buckled to the floor in excruciating agony terrorized by this huge brute then he would rape  her calling her vile names increasing in intensity and degradation as he climaxed.   Then he would either fall over in a drunken stupor or leave the house again unlocking the door and telling his daughters their mother was behaving now.    Traumatic circumstances are interpreted by children in a number of ways.   The favored sister felt their mother was weak and deserved to be beaten, she would even punch her mattress and smile at the sound of every punch heard of their father landing his fist against their mother’s flesh.   More story line here, possibly the next book in this series.   Salander hated their father and grew up hating men that beat women or children and would retaliate on any such male she came across that happened to be a woman or child beater doling out vigilante justice on the males.    Solander was edgy and elusive learning everything she could in both computer technology, martial arts, boxing and street fighting.    She was a brilliant mathematician,  and good at whatever she set her mind to.    When her mentor and favorite professor is killed and his autistic savant son also brutalized by the same men, she is on a mission to kill them and take down every one involved from the top crime figures to the top government intelligence agencies working together throughout the world.   There is much to this story as to why anyone would be after her mentor, there is background on the group of students her mentor hand selected for their special abilities that he referred to as his spiders much more on that in the story.    Salander will team up with her journalist friend to track down the whereabouts of the savaunt boy to try to save him from the murderers of his father and other elite agencies who want to use him as bait.    One of those heart pumping thrillers, the reader will feel the adrenaline pumping as this well written book races and rages to its end.    Good book.   I recommend starting the series with the first book as the characters will make more sense, although, each book in the series could stand on its own the continuity will flow better if read in sequence.

 - Shirley J