Eagle’s Talons opens with the introduction of The Cleaner. A human monster that’s a rapist and professional killer. Later we discover that he is brother to Henry Salo. That’s not a spoiler. You don’t know who Henry Salo is. He’s not canonical.
The Cleaner has a name, but he puts his name in his past. Smirnoff deftly demonstrates the power of names. The Cleaner doesn’t name his victims. They are simply bodies. The Delivery Man gives him a live victim. The Cleaner rapes her. He kills her. He cleans up the murder.
The Cleaner fits with the themes explored by Stieg Larsson in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, named in Sweden as Men Who Hate Women. Quite honestly. That title never would have sold in America, no matter how good the word of mouth. So whomever retiled the book Dragon Tattoo deserves accolades.
The Cleaner grants Eagle’s Talons’ title. The Cleaner’s humanizing element arises in the form of a love for nature. Particularly the Sea Eagle. We also learn later he will not kill children. Mainly though, his study of sea eagles is what makes him interesting and distinguishes him from the many other low-lives in Eagle’s Nest.
In Chapter Two, Smirnoff introduces the reader to thirteen year old Svala (Swallow) and her mother Marta Hirak. Svala is the daughter of Ronald Niedermann…
…the hulking brute who tried to murder his half-sister Lisbeth Salander in canonical The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Yup. He tried to kill her twice. Swell guy. Svala inherited the genes that express her aunt’s scary intellect and her father’s inability to feel pain.
Marta unfortunately keeps hooking up with the wrong men. That includes a “step”—Svala refuses to refer to him as stepfather—known as Pap Peder.
Svala as you may have inferred, due to life experience, is not a normal child. Evil men stole Lisbeth’s and Svala’s childhood, but in different ways. Smirnoff furthermore depicts in Svala the nature/nurture connection, which is a nice touch. Svala though the spawn of Niedermann isn’t evil. Her mother, despite her circumstances, saw to it that Svala would turn out better.
Peder exploited Svala. Though he tried to physically abuse her, he discovered to his dismay that didn’t work. He instead mentally abused her by threatening Marta and sometimes carrying out those threats. Eventually he saw Svala’s mathematics skills as profitable, but he isn’t the only one.
Members of Lisbeth’s old canonical enemy the Svavelsjo Motorcycle Club are in Peder’s employ. Two thought it would be a good idea to freelance, using Svala to open Henry Salo’s safe. The only thing she finds in the safe unbeknownst to the bikers is an envelope addressed to her containing a key. What the key leads to becomes the macguffin for both novels and doesn’t merit thinking about.
The gruesome twosome decide to kill Svala. In a harrowing scenario dripping with feral atmosphere, Svala escapes by the skin of her teeth. I suppose that could be considered a spoiler, but I would have been more shocked if Smirnoff had killed Svala off after such a warm and meaningful introduction.
Joe Bob Briggs notes that one of the elements that makes a great horror movie is the axiom: “Anybody can die at any time.” He’s got a point, but I would have been highly and justifiably pissed off if the bikers succeeded in killing Svala right at the beginning.
Svala finds refuge with Marianne, the holdout in a wind farm production project in Gasskas. Wind farms and solar power are safer bets than fossil fuel. Damage to the environment and the livelihood of others is the price one pays when cutting corners and not playing fair. Corruption is corruption. Laziness is laziness. The wind farm will become a hub of the story.
Mikael Blomkvist enters the picture. He’s going to Gasskas to a wedding between his daughter Pernilla, his little girl from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Henry Salo, a mover and shaker on the town council. In Smirnoff’s book Mikael turned out to be a bad father. He tries to make amends. He wants to be a good grandfather to Pernilla’s son Lukas. Lukas is not Henry Salo’s biological son.
I’m not on board with Blomkvist ignoring Pernilla to such an extent that’s implied. In Dragon Tattoo, Larsson states that Blomkvist let Pernilla decide when to see him. He seems to have a good relationship with his ex-wife, his daughter and her stepfather. Still, this is the book Smirnoff wrote. So, I’m stuck with the cliche.
As Mikael gets to know his future son-in-law, who is thoroughly detestable, Marcus Branco slithers into frame. Marcus Branco could have been played by the late, great Michael Wisher.
A handsome fellow except when in make up.
I could not help imagining Branco as Davros-like while reading Eagle’s Nest. Not a dead ringer for Davros, mind you. Nor even his voice. Something similar without being grotesque. Nobody remarks on Branco’s ugliness so I presume he’s average in looks from the waist up, anyhow. His mind-set however. Oh, that’s in the sewers. It’s so seamy that it probably surfaces in his visage. You would look at him and know. Something’s wrong there. Smirnoff’s Branco is a superb creation that snugly embraces the misogyny Stieg Larsson attempted to spotlight.
The Branco Group, a former security firm, now diversifies into big business. They use their data on subjects to among other things initiate takeovers. That web of blackmail also facilitates its namesake fascist billionaire who procures underage girls from the refugee camp, rapes them and disposes of them. One of those girls Sophia Konare will become a supporting character in the novel rather than just another victim. Just another victim is who we see The Cleaner dispose of in his introduction.
Branco representing the Branco Group wants all of the wind farm action. Salo states this is impossible. It really is given the multinational setup. The fact that Branco seems to be ignoring the impossibility is a testament to his ego and madness. His latter assault during Pernilla’s wedding after-party identifies an insane pettiness. There simply was no way for Henry Salo to make Branco the sole owner of the wind farm, but that flies in the face of Branco’s reality. So, he attacks that reality with the help of like-minded, brutal yes-men one of whom is a yes-woman.
Mikael spends quality time with Henry Salo. Salo would do anything else but spend a single moment with Marcus Branco. Meanwhile, Svala’s Grandmother, her sole support since Marta’s disappearance, dies.
Svala meets her aunt. It takes a while, but once Lisbeth Salander appears, she dominates Eagle’s Talons. Smirnoff portrays her in words that strike an image similar, almost identical, to Stieg Larsson’s creation.
Lisbeth takes Svala under her wing and immediately susses out that Svala doesn’t have the problems of a normal child, nor is she a normal child. Both Eagle’s Talons and Ice in Her Veins have one great thing in common. Aunt Lisbeth. Svala would be second.
Lisbeth naturally conducts a search for Svala’s missing mother. She finds nothing in the beginning. When she connects all the dots, she instead discovers a plot against Svala. That just won’t do.
Because the bikers have it in for Svala, Lisbeth and she take a trip to Finland. It’s Salva’s idea to go to Rovaniemi, commonly known as Christmas Town. The setting provides the book’s only humorous scenes. Well, I laughed during several moments where Lisbeth deals with loathsome men, but that’s just me. Lisbeth as one may expect despises Christmas. Perhaps not the holiday itself, but the trappings that clash with her black leather jacket.
Things go even worse for Mikael. Branco to teach Salo a lesson for his asking the preposterous orchestrates an attack on the after wedding party and abducts Lukas. Branco’s men deliver Lukas to the Cleaner. Yes. The novel should have been entitled The Boy in the Eagle’s Talons, but I recognize why they did what they did.
Lisbeth reunites with Mikael and meets one of Svala’s Uncles in the hospital. Mikael was wounded in an attempt to go after the kidnappers at the scene of the crime. Pernilla tried to save her son, but kidnapper Varg waylaid her.
Varg is often a one-note lieutenant in the novel. I’m not one of those readers who thinks every figure in a novel must have a rich history. Varg is often one-note because there’s not much depth there. Smirnoff adds a nuance to him during the after-wedding event. He exhibits a few brief inner thoughts directing respect to Pernilla. She does what most including Henry Salo did not. That’s all the depth somebody like Varg needs.
Lisbeth teams with Mikael to hunt down and punish Lukas’ kidnappers. Smirnoff replicates their detective work in Dragon Tattoo. In very little time, Lisbeth and Mikael locate the van in which Branco kidnapped Lukas. Surpassing the police once again led by canonical ass Hans Faste.
One of the better Gasskas police officers, Jessica, becomes Lisbeth’s love/lust interest. I make the distinction because of the various definitions people have regarding love. I don’t think Lisbeth is a character who sees love as everlasting, but that’s just me.
Lisbeth’s and Jessica’s relationship fills a very small subplot in Eagle’s Talons. You know that Jessica will not be as important to Lisbeth as the canonical Miriam Wu. By the end of Eagle’s Talons, Lisbeth’s done with her.
Before that happens, Lisbeth takes Jessica to a party hosted by her old enemies the Svavelsjo Motorcycle Club. Jessica believes Lisbeth suicidal. Lisbeth is hoping to overhear stupid psychopaths talking about the kidnapping and Marta’s disappearance.
In a twist, at the party, Lisbeth meets Pap Peder. All the villains of Smirnoff’s novel know each other, employ and use each other. This is one of the many means in which Smirnoff seamlessly connects the narrative. That coherence is sadly lacking in Ice in Her Veins.
Pap makes the mistake of attacking Lisbeth. With an assist from Jessica, whom we learn is one of his past early victims, Lisbeth incapacitates him. Again, there’s that theme of Men Who Hate Women.
Lisbeth’s thorough disassembly of Pap facilitates Svala’s luring Peder to real-life vacation destination Britta’s Tree Hotel. In a very telling moment, after Svala overcomes her nemesis through clever trap-making, Lisbeth comes looking for her.
The relationship between the two characters feels genuine. Lisbeth sees Svala as her responsibility and despite being who she is does not abrogate her responsibility.
Pap Peder’s disdain and abhorrent intent for Svala contrasts the Cleaner’s treatment of Lukas. Branco orders the boy killed. The Cleaner sticks with his few principles. He will not kill Lukas. He instead calls Henry Salo.
All of these failures to deliver a corpse snowball into Branco’s complete humiliation by Lisbeth and Svala.
Lisbeth traces Branco to his bunker the Eagle’s Nest. The means through which she hunts him down exemplify Lisbeth’s deductive mind. This simple scene reflects the authentic Lisbeth. As she did in Millennium she comfortably uses older methods. Lisbeth doesn't believe technology is the be all and end all. Lisbeth is a master of technology. It doesn't use her.
Approximately the same time, Sophia Konare escapes, but because of the snow and bitter cold weather, escape doesn’t really seem to be the right word. She propels out of the bunker and into the elements. Fortunately, Lisbeth happens to be scouting for Branco’s hideout.
Lisbeth meets Varg who hunts for Sophia. It doesn’t go well for him. Branco sums it up best: “the person in the forest. A diminutive karate monster. ‘out for a walk.’”
With Sophia safe, Lisbeth decides to end Branco and his team once and for all. Svala amusingly dons her aunt’s war paint to accompany her. Lisbeth forbids it. We all know how this is going to turn out. It turns out quite well. Eagle’s Talons ends with a strong finale, that if not as cinematic as a Hollywood climax, nevertheless provides action, suspense and Lisbeth Salander in outstanding form.
