The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
by Stieg Larsson
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The final volume in the blockbuster “Millennium” trilogy opens with its tattooed heroine being rushed to a Swedish hospital with a bullet in her skull, said Brendan Bernhard in TheNewYorkSun.com. Though Lisbeth Salander “is arguably a male fantasy object,” there’s no denying the appeal of a 4-foot-11 spitfire who “refuses to stop fighting back” and also refuses to be a mere caricature. Stieg Larsson’s swift-moving finale “verges on a celebration of retributive female violence against men.”
Innocent
by Scott Turow
(Grand Central, $28)
Twenty-three years after publishing Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow has written a “superbly paced mystery” as its sequel, said Terrence Rafferty in The New York Times. Rusty Sabich, now a judge, has once again broken his marital vows and wound up accused of murder. Despite the familiar plot, Turow has returned to Sabich for the best of reasons: to explore the many ways in which we all “fail to understand ourselves.” The result is a serious novel that’s both “gripping and darkly self-reflective.”
61 Hours
by Lee Child
(Delacorte, $28)
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series “gets better and better,” said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. Child’s “tough, cerebral drifter” has been slugging bad guys and fixing wrongs for 14 novels now, but the latest installment begins to peel away his shell. While marooned in a South Dakota town, Reacher is drawn into the locals’ battle with an international meth ring. But two new female characters, and the questions they ask about Reacher, provide the most satisfying surprises.
Finding Chandra
by Scott Higham & Sari Horwitz
(Scribner, $26)
This true account of a famous botched murder investigation “is a triumph of investigative journalism,” said Julia Dahl in the San Francisco Chronicle. When Washington Post reporters Higham and Horwitz dug into the evidence surrounding the 2001 slaying of Washington intern Chandra Levy, they accomplished what police and the FBI failed to do: exonerate ex-congressman and philanderer Gary Condit and identify a Salvadoran immigrant as the likely killer.
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”