Review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009) by Dg J — 02 Apr 2011

After surgery, she is moved to an intensive care ward under guard, accessible only to police, doctors, nurses, and her lawyer, Annika Giannini (who is also Mikael Blomkvist's sister). Zalachenko, who Salander injured with an axe, is two rooms away. Niedermann is on the run from the police after murdering a police officer and carjacking and kidnapping a woman during his escape. Niedermann seeks help from his old friends at Svavelsjö M.C., kills the treasurer and steals 800,000 kronor before disappearing.

Evert Gullberg, the founder and former chief of "the Section", a secret division of Säpo that harbored and protected Zalachenko, asks former Section associate Frederik Clinton to become acting head of the Section and plots to deflect attention away from the Section by silencing Salander, Blomkvist and Zalachenko.

They first form a working alliance with the unsuspecting Prosecutor of Salander's case, Richard Ekström. Dr. Peter Teleborian, a member of The Section and the psychiatrist who supervised Salander when she was previously institutionalized, provides Ekstrom with a false psychiatric examination and recommends that she be reinstitutionalized, preferably without a trial.

Gullberg, terminally ill with cancer, murders Zalachenko in his hospital bed and then commits suicide. Section operatives stage a suicide for Gunnar Bjorck, the junior Sapo officer who had handled Zalachenko after the latter's defection, and who was Blomkvist's source of information about the Section. Other Section operatives burglarize Blomkvist's apartment, mug Annika Giannini, and plant bugs in the homes and phones of Millennium staff. Undeterred, Blomkvist continues to investigate the Section for a Millennium exposé.