The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (original title in ) is the third novel in the best-selling Millennium series by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. It was published in Swedish in 2007; in English, in the UK, in October 2009; and in the US and Canada on 25 May 2010. The three novels in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006), and The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest were written by Stieg Larsson and were published posthumously after his fatal heart attack in 2004. All three novels were adapted as films. Plot A severely wounded Lisbeth Salander is placed in intensive care at Sahlgrenska Hospital. It picks up where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off, two rooms away from her also-injured father, Alexander Zalachenko, whom Salander injured with an axe. Ronald Niedermann, Zalachenko's son and Salander's half-brother, steals 800,000 kronor from his outlaw motorcycle gang before disappearing. These events prompt immediate action from "the Section", a secret counterintelligence division of Säpo which shielded the abusive Zalachenko and forcibly institutionalized Salander after she attempted to kill him as a child. Evert Gullberg, founder and former chief of the Section, plots to deflect attention by silencing Salander, Zalachenko, and Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine. Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Teleborian, the corrupt psychiatrist who abused Salander during her institutionalization, provides prosecutor Richard Ekström with a false psychiatric examination so that she can be recommitted. Gullberg, who has terminal cancer, shoots Zalachenko in his hospital bed. He attempts to enter Salander's room to kill her as well, but is thwarted by her lawyer, Annika Giannini, leading to him committing suicide. Section operatives also murder Gunnar Björk, Zalachenko's former Säpo handler and Blomkvist's source of information for an upcoming exposé; the operatives falsify the death as a suicide. Other operatives break into Blomkvist's apartment and mug Giannini, making off with copies of the classified Säpo file that contains Zalachenko's identity and planting bugs in the homes and phones of Millennium staff. The timing of the attacks and the property that was taken cause Blomkvist to realise that the phones are tapped, and he begins to investigate the Section in earnest. Blomkvist hires Dragan Armansky's Milton Security to handle countersurveillance.