The last novel of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy cannot be reviewed in isolation. The late author meant us to treat the three as one — indeed, he delivered all three to his publisher together, and not serially. Each is self-contained only in the sense that it has a separate central plot; but there are many crucial themes, storylines and character developments that flow throughout the 1,800 or so pages of the trilogy. I would not recommend anyone to read Hornets’ Nest who has not read the previous two, just as I would not urge starting an acquaintance with Marcel Proust with the fourth volume of À la recherche du temps perdu.

Am I, by that comparison, elevating Larsson to a kind of greatness, albeit in the somewhat narrower field of crime fiction? Not quite. Larsson’s work is original, inventive, shocking, disturbing and challenging. But many of his plots and main characters — and particularly the massively emotionally damaged victim of violent rape, the super-tough, tattooed, bisexual cyber-genius heroine Lisbeth Salander, “the girl” in the titles of the three novels — are too exaggerated to believe, even within the conventions of a genre in which reality usually has to give way to drama. But the second book’s excess of violence is not repeated in the third.

Hornets’ Nest begins with Salander in hospital, after being shot in the head and planning revenge on her assailants, especially on her murderous father, lying a few doors away. Police and prosecutors have 20 different reasons for wanting her to recover: they want to put her on trial for attempting to kill him, so that she can be found guilty, classed as insane and sent to an institution where no one will believe her accusations of abuse. The chapters taking place in the courtroom are among the most brilliant of the whole trilogy. Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist, the principal male hero, editor of the investigative magazine Millennium, Salander’s former lover turned estranged friend, is on the trail of a scandal that goes to the root of Swedish society and security.

Stieg Larsson’s immensely readable Millennium novels are far from flawless; they are too long and often unnecessarily complex. But they’ve brought a much needed freshness into the world of crime fiction.

The Monster in the Box is Ruth Rendell in subdued and nostalgic mood. Chief Inspector Wexford of the Kingsmarkham force unexpectedly comes across Eric Targo, a dog-lover who, he instinctively feels, committed several murders years before, though there’s never been any evidence to support this. His sighting of Targo gives Wexford the opportunity to look back on his own past as a debutant policeman courting young girls, including his future wife. There’s a murder. Could the killer be Targo, resuming his old, unproven, habits? A pleasant read, though not helped by a plotline about a 16-year-old Muslim girl feared to be the subject of a forced marriage. This has the faint whiff of Wexford’s last case.

The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland, MacLehose Press, £18.99 Buy this book

The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell Hutchinson, £18.99 Buy this book

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