Pick of the Brown Bag
November 16, 2025
by
Ray Tate
Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag. I'm Ray Tate, the creator and concocter of the POBB. If you've just found the blog, you're not lost. I normally review comic books. This missive is the third part of a rare look at prose books. You can find parts one and two below and nigh immediately when clicking the older posts link.
The special POBB examines the work of Karin Smirnoff, the latest author attempting to offer sequels to Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.
After reading and enjoying Karin Smirnoff's first sequel, The Girl in the Eagle's Talons, I actually tracked when her second book would arrive. While I waited, Trump's tariffs increased book prices. I didn't balk because I didn't think Smirnoff would let me down. That this book would be as much of a keeper as Eagle's Talons. Nope.
The finale to Eagle’s Talons flaws The Girl with Ice in Her Veins. One part of the novel is devoted to non-canonical villain Marcus Branco seeking revenge against Lisbeth Salander and Svala, Lisbeth's non-canonical niece.
Branco's hatred of Svala reflects his fascism and racism. He's also child molester, and passages indicate he longs to rape Svala. Thus Smirnoff once again follows the themes of Larsson's trilogy.
Branco hates Lisbeth in a different way. In Eagle's Talons, she physically and mentally hurt him. He hates and fears Lisbeth. He doesn't want to humiliate her. He wants her as dead as possible, as quickly as possible. He furthermore does not care who carries out the deed. As long as she's dead. This want makes his early scheme with the new Lo even more tactically dubious.
Branco sends Lo out to seduce Lisbeth. The move on the surface is preposterous. Lisbeth already spent adversarial time with Lo in the finale of Eagle’s Talons. Lo’s parting words to Lisbeth consist of:
“Burn you goddamned rats, you’ll soon be burning in hell.”
Lisbeth sees Lo. She hears her. She’s unlikely to forget her, even without her canonical photographic memory. Smirnoff must know this. Rather than drop a bad idea. She casually reinvents Lo.
Lo isn’t a reboot. She’s a different woman. Another woman, essentially “neutered,” just like the “original” Lo, but with the same name. This doesn’t make sense.
The “original” Lo is the only woman in Branco Group’s inner circle. She was part of Lukas’ kidnapping. She faced Lisbeth Salander in the bunker. How does this new Lo become Branco’s trusted right hand man? So trusted that he pulls her from the seduction assignment when it doesn’t appear to be working. Doesn’t kill her. Mind you. Just pulls her.
So, let me get this straight. You thought it would be a good idea to make a big deal about Lo. Redevelop her into a completely different woman. Specifically so Lisbeth wouldn’t remember her, nor her voice. Then have her pulled from the assignment? What is the point of this exercise? I asked that question a lot while inching through Ice in Her Veins.
We also have no satisfactory explanation for the “original” Lo’s disappearance after Eagle’s Talons. What exactly happened to her? Lisbeth didn’t kill her. Branco didn’t kill her. She appeared to escape.
The original Lo’s animosity toward Lisbeth arose quite late in Eagle’s Talons. Lo drank the Kool-Aid. She believes in the promise of Branco’s fruitcake fascist vision.
Lisbeth puts a bullet in Branco, and that’s enough to set Lo off. Refer to the quote. Lo’s obsessive loyalty would logically drive her to be a part of Lisbeth’s demise. Yet she’s not here.
Smirnoff’s Ice in Her Veins is a slog. There’s a good novella in this 365 page drag, but that novella as well needs editing.
The story begins promisingly. Lisbeth, felled by the common cold, takes part in the prologue. A rare thing in books. Here she begins to investigate Plague’s strange behavior in Eagle’s Talons.
Chapter Five introduces the murder of Ester Sondergran that should motivate all the cast but strangely doesn’t. Instead, Smirnoff will link the new Lo with the mentally damaged witness to the crime.
Neither of these things are deal breakers. The latter however seems in my opinion to be artifice to better excuse the appearance of a second Lo. Why not just keep her as Marika Vikstrom? Perhaps make her Lo’s assistant. Call her Ferret, if you like. It’s just really annoying to spend Chapter Nine finding out this new woman has now been dubbed Lo.
You’ll get the most out of Smirnoff’s second work if you skip chapters six, seven, eight, eleven, fifteen, nineteen through twenty-three, twenty-six through twenty-eight, fifty through fifty-four, sixty-seven through most of seventy-one and seventy-two.
Chapter six through eight for example is a self-contained short story featuring Officers Jessica and Birna. It serves only to superfluously flesh them out. Expanding on their characterizations is unimportant to the novel. They’re only minor players.
Ice in Her Veins properly starts with Chapter Twelve. The discovery of the body. Ester, the friend and colleague of Svala. In Chapter Thirteen Mikael Blomkvist enters the picture. An unfortunate awkwardness and uncharacteristic dialogue between he and Lisbeth palls the serious nature of the meeting. Mikael has a file that he wants Lisbeth to eye.
Chapters nineteen through twenty-three; twenty-six through twenty-eight try to humanize the Cleaner. These chapters take him away from nature and the sea eagles. None of this works. He’s a rapist and killer. Furthermore, in these chapters he only interacts with peripheral characters. Not a single word in this span is important.
Had Smirnoff minimized The Cleaner’s involvement, or remove it from the book altogether, until Svala’s encounter, his re-emergence would have been more effective. No. The Cleaner does not threaten Svala. She’s a child. The Cleaner does not harm children. In any case, it would have been, "Oh, hey. That's the Cleaner from the first book!" not "Sink me, Sir Percy. How much more of the Cleaner's sex life must we know?"
In Chapter Twenty-Four, Smirnoff redirects to Lisbeth and Mikael searching for the now missing Plague. This is when Lo’s honeytrap begins. Reservations aside about this character being in the book and the bizarreness of instituting a honeytrap, it’s a decent seduction. Lisbeth is naturally suspicious, but also interested. Lisbeth plans to use her, not the other way around. What a shame Smirnoff cuts back to the Cleaner in Twenty-Six, ad infinitum.
In an outré Chapter Thirty-Three, we learn that Branco has an AI girlfriend. I’m sorry. What now? Such a thing seems completely alien to his character. He’s a child rapist. He doesn’t have his splendid headquarters the Eagle’s Nest, nor the multinational wind farm, but he still possesses Varg, a Lo, flunkies, the resources of Branco Group, etc. He should be orchestrating more abductions. He should be compelled to satisfy his lusts. Instead, AI girlfriend. It’s just weird, and Branco’s not weird. He’s fucking evil.
In Chapter Forty-One, Svala attempts to pump Henry Salo for information regarding the new mining of rare earth elements in an old dump. This is apparently what got her friend killed and serves as the catalyst to a protest in which Svala takes part.
In Chapter Forty-Three, Kostas Long a minor non-canonical character in Eagle’s Talons resurfaces. Why? Why interrupt the flow? Fine. Kostas Long resurfaces. Wish somebody drowned him.
Smirnoff intends to shape Long into a villain of worth rather than Lisbeth’s one-night stand. He is so uninteresting. Smirnoff realizes that he must be interesting if he’s a suspect for the murder of Ester. So, she tries to spin Kostas as Lukas’ father. Guess who’s coming to dinner, Pernilla?
The canonical Pernilla needn’t be in this story. Henry Salo’s role could have been reduced to a walk-on, dialogue confrontation against Svala. Salo is unappealing. Following his point of view however briefly is tedious and painful. Empathizing with him, impossible.
Lisbeth finally returns in Chapter Forty-Four. Mikael close behind. Branco begins instituting some queer moves against them. It’s as if he’s never done this sort of thing before, which seems unlikely. Honeytrap with Lo. Pull her away. Bicyclist attack for Mikael. Non-lethal intent. Just to mess with him. Threaten Lisbeth’s therapist. Booga-Booga! Branco acts more like a goofball rather than an insidious fascist leader bent on revenge.
A really good piece of writing. The kind prevalent in Eagle’s Talons appears in Chapter Forty-Eight:
“A swallow named Svala is hunched down on the landing, propped against the door. She’s pulled her arms out of her anorak sleeves to tuck around herself. Her hair is a tousled mess. She is bleary-eyed. Flattened.”
Just beautiful. Lisbeth figures out quickly that something happened to Svala other than the murder of her friend, and she begins to calculate revenge on Svala’s behalf.
In Chapter Forty-Nine, Lisbeth learns about Svala’s dead friend and we get a tiny bit of progress regarding Plague, but bang on Chapter Fifty. It’s the Salo and Kostas Long show. One a thoroughly terrible human being, and the other, I dunno.
This is another overall irritating thing about Ice In Her Veins. Smirnoff keeps precluding momentum. She interrupts the velocity of events with detours that nobody cares about. The Salo and Long show continues through Chapter Fifty-Five.
Hitting Fifty-Six, Svala meets the Cleaner and learns more about Branco. Together they hatch a scheme to destroy him. In Chapters Fifty-Seven through Sixty-Seven we finally get back to the meat of the story, but these chapters are messily written. Lisbeth’s renewed lusts for Mikael and Jessica just seem to be planted. She dropped them both when it seemed like they didn’t want her. These distractions aside, at least we get to the search for Plague. Again, Smirnoff gives us the glimmer of skillful writing displayed in Eagle’s Talons:
“Her thoughts shoot outward, radiating like strings from a midpoint. Svala’s disappearance, Plague, the ransomware attack on municipal council (and Henry Salo), Ester Sodergran, Marianne Lekatt and her missing son, what else?”
Lisbeth puts everything together, including what upset Svala enough for her to camp on the doorstep.
Probably the best chapters in Ice In Her Veins are Sixty-Two through Sixty-Five. If you included Chapter Forty-Eight and additional material found in the book, this would have been the darkly comical novella involving only Svala, Lisbeth and a few other cast members.
Damn it. We’re back to Salo and Kostas Long in Chapter Sixty-Six through Seventy-One. It doesn’t matter if Lisbeth and Mikael are heroic in these chapters. These sections have no business cluttering up Ice in Her Veins. If Smirnoff wanted Kostas Long to be the villain of the piece, she should have saved him for another novel and refocus. No matter. The idea that Long slept with Lisbeth, Jessica and Pernilla is outrageously stupid. On a subjective and objective level. I also question the attempted kidnapping of Pernilla's son Lukas. Too repetitive.
Chapter Seventy-Three, Lisbeth tracks Svala and makes certain her needs are met. Really quiet things she does, but Lisbeth doesn’t want to damper Svala’s independence nor upset her plans. She draws a red line that Svala doesn’t yet cross, where Lisbeth deduces, glides Branco and company. Finally, Smirnoff pulls a genuine twist. It’s just, by this time, will you care? Can you appreciate it after reading all of the stagnant sludge about the Cleaner, Henry Salo, Kostas Long and other characters not scintillating enough to fascinate?
Chapter Seventy-Four concludes the novella, that still needed editing. It’s a terrific ending. Svala takes after her aunt and transforms into a junior action hero. After the novella, we finally get back to Branco.
Setting a trap, Svala arranges to turn over the macguffin to Branco. She underestimates him. Branco is a perverted savage. This is the Branco we met in Eagle's Talons. Svala’s plan goes to hell. Lisbeth Salander storms to the rescue and instills conniptions in Marcus Branco:
“At first he can only see the hair. Short, swept back. It’s when the creature turns its ugly mug to the camera and laughs like a hyena that he completely blows his top.”
Too much of this book is a meander. The focus in Eagle’s Talons is nowhere to be found in Ice in Her Veins. I’d swear Knopf Publishing, impatient for the second novel, raided Smirnoff’s abode, snatched as many notes about the first and second novels as they could, smooshed them together and gave the haphazard amalgamation to the translator.
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