Lisbeth Salander returns: David Lagercrantz to write next book in Millennium series

Lisbeth Salander, a.k.a. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, will continue to hack another day. Swedish writer Stieg Larsson penned Girl and the subsequent two sequels, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, prior to his death in 2004. Writer David Lagercrantz took over the Millennium series in 2015 with The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

On Friday, Alfred A. Knopf editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta announced that Lagercrantz is writing a fifth installment of the Millennium series. Mehta praised Lagercrantz’s addition to Larsson’s work in statement saying, “The success of The Girl in the Spider’s Web demonstrates the affinity readers feel for this series and for these characters… David’s seamless continuation of the world Stieg created, in this new book and the last, is an extraordinary achievement.

Lagercrantz also said in a statement that the idea for the fifth book came to him while on vacation. “During a holiday trip with my family an idea struck me. It arose the same fever that I lived with when I wrote The Girl in the Spider’s Web. It is not so good for my sleep and my neurosis, but it is definitively good for my writing.”

The Millennium series, about hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkivist, became a worldwide phenomenon spurring two film adaptations — one an English-language version directed by David Fincher and starring Rooney Mara.

The fifth book in the Millennium series is expected in September 2017.