Sunday Magazine – August 18, 2019

52 S MAGAZINE ★ 18 AUGUST 2019

the sometimes irritatingly long-winded Larsson

books, while still finding room for some nice

eccentric touches. In the final analysis, though,

it lacks something of the soul of the originals.

Platform Seven ****

by Louise Doughty

(Faber, £14.99)

The original Swedish title of Stieg Larsson’s

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo translates as

“Men Who Hate Women” and that would also

make a good title for the collected works of

Louise Doughty.

Her most famous novel, Apple Tree Yard,

which became a smashing drama on BBC

television, features a woman in trouble after

the man who has raped and stalked her is

murdered. But in real life, abusive men tend to

end up killing rather than being killed, and that

is what her latest novel is about.

It’s the story of the relationship between

Lisa, an English teacher, and Matty, a doctor.

Matty is a smooth-talking psycho who knows

how to hurt Lisa without leaving a bruise. The

swine even uses her love of poetry and fiction

against her when she starts to question his

behaviour, accusing her of over-imagination.

Nothing could be more gripping than the

story of how Lisa initially tries to explain away

Matty’s weirdness to herself and then, as the

situation escalates, she makes brave but

hopeless attempts to escape the relationship

• until in the course of one such attempt, she
  dies. That’s not a spoiler, as we know from the
  start of the book that Lisa is dead. The novel
  takes the form of a narrative by Lisa’s ghost,
  who haunts Peterborough Railway Station, the
  place where she died.
  In her afterword, Doughty talks about the

Charlotte

Heathcote

To p f i v e s

Fiction

Non-fiction

Children’s

Twists

& turns

Jake Kerridge reviews

three gripping thrillers

The Girl Who Lived Twice ****

by David Lagercrantz

(MacLehose Press, £20)

Stieg Larsson died after writing only three

books about his angsty, indomitable heroine

Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon

tattoo. When his fellow Swedish author

David Lagercrantz wrote a sequel, The Girl

In The Spider’s Web, one wondered if he was

channelling Larsson’s spirit, so well did he

capture the character.

But in his second sequel, The Girl Who

Takes An Eye For An Eye, Lagercrantz seemed

to be losing interest in Salander, distracted

by pursuing new characters and storylines.

Should the series have been retired – or

another writer found?

The good news is that Salander is centre-

stage again in Lagercrantz’s latest sequel.

At the end of the last book, she vowed to

take revenge on her long-term nemesis, her

beautiful but evil twin sister Camilla, and

now she is on the case, while shacked up

with a new girlfriend whom she has rescued

from an abusive husband.

As always, topical left-wing politics are the

lifeblood of the book. Camilla has chummed up

with a very modern villain: a Russian mafioso

who runs a string of troll factories that pollute

the world with fake news.

Meanwhile, Salander’s old pal Mikael

Blomkvist is wringing his hands over the

murder of a beggar he walked past every day

and ignored – regarding himself, of course, as

symptomatic of the “new broken Stockholm”.

This book is much more in the spirit of the

Larsson novels than its predecessor and

Lagercrantz clearly understands and adores

Larsson’s characters, even the minor ones.

But he could afford to be less respectful of

Blomkvist, a bore who deserves to be demoted

to a cameo role.

This is a pacy read and much tighter than

1. Pinch Of Nom
   by Kay Featherstone
   and Kate Allinson
   (Bluebird, £20)


2. Time To Eat
   by Nadiya Hussain
   (Michael Joseph, £20)


3. This Is Going To Hurt
   by Adam Kay
   (Picador, £8.99)


4. Battle Scars
   by Jason Fox (Corgi, £8.99)


5. The Secret Barrister
   by The Secret Barrister
   (Picador, £9.99)


6. The World’s Worst Teachers
   by David Walliams and Tony
   Ross (HarperCollins, £14.99)


7. Dumbo: Circus Of Dreams
   by Kari Sutherland
   (Centum, £6.99)


8. Diary Of An Awesome
   Friendly Kid by Jeff Kinney
   (Puffin, £12.99)


9. The Wonky Donkey by Craig
   Smith and Katz Cowley
   (Scholastic, £6.99)


10. Bad Dad by David Walliams
    and Tony Ross (HarperCollins
    Children’s, £6.99)
    
    
    1. The Fox
       by Frederick Forsyth
       (Corgi, £8.99)
    
    
    2. The Reckoning
       by John Grisham
       (Hodder, £7.99)
    
    
    3. The Man With No Face
       by Peter May
       (Riverrun, £7.99)
    
    
    4. Absolute Proof
       by Peter James
       (Macmillan, £8.99)
    
    
    5. One Minute Later
       by Susan Lewis
       (HarperCollins, £7.99)
    
    
    
    

MEGAN BRAMLEY