New ‘Dragon Tattoo’ Girl book cover revealed

It’s a banner day for fans of Lisbeth Salander: The girl with the dragon tattoo is returning in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” The book will hit shelves Sept. 1; its cover was released today by Knopf.

Salander was created by Steig Larsson, a Swedish political journalist who died of a heart attack before seeing the massive international success of his thrillers. The books, which were called the Millennium Trilogy -- “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” -- have sold more than 80 million copies worldwide.

Of course fans wanted Salander to return, but how? Larssen’s literary legacy was the subject of a court case in Sweden, where his partner of 30 years, Eva Gabrielsson, fought for control of his estate with his father and brother. Although Larsson had reportedly been estranged from his family, the family won, as Swedish law affords few rights to unmarried partners.

At one point during the case, it was rumored that Gabrielsson had a laptop with a partially-completed Salander book by Larsson, but it did not materialize. “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” was written by David Lagercrantz, a Swedish crime reporter and novelist, who was selected by the estate to continue the series.

“Stieg Larsson was a master at creating complex narratives,” Lagercrantz said in a release, “narratives made all the more forceful because of the journalistic authority with which they were originally written. That was something that informed my approach to book four, and I’m confident Millennium readers will identify with the storylines in Spider’s Web.”

The book includes corruption and computer hacking, plus, Lagercrantz explains, “some surprises... including the introduction of Silicon Valley as a locale and a character from the National Security Agency in a central role. There are even symbols and code.”

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