Karin Smirnoff

Karin Smirnoff is a Swedish author who took over Stieg Larsson's Millennium series in 2022, writing The Girl in the Eagle's Talons as its seventh installment and continuing with The Girl with Ice in Her Veins, following the earlier continuation novels written by David Lagercrantz. Both Smirnoff and Lagercrantz worked from outlines and notes Larsson left behind before his death in 2004, extending the story of hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist well beyond the original trilogy Larsson completed in his lifetime.

Before taking on Millennium, Smirnoff had already established herself in Swedish literary fiction with the acclaimed Jana Kippo trilogy (2018-2020), set in the fictional far-northern village of Smalanger and quite different in tone from the urban, tech-inflected thrillers of Millennium -- a shift the Swedish press noted with some surprise when she was announced as Lagercrantz's successor. Only the trilogy's opening volume, My Brother, has so far appeared in English (Pushkin Press, 2021, translated by Anna Paterson); it was shortlisted for Sweden's August Prize. Her selection to write Millennium was seen as an attempt to bring a distinct literary voice back to the franchise after Lagercrantz's more straightforwardly thriller-paced continuation novels.

A reader new to Smirnoff's Millennium entries should have already read the original trilogy by Larsson and, ideally, Lagercrantz's continuation novels first, since her books build directly on decades of accumulated Salander and Blomkvist history. The Millennium franchise has been adapted into Swedish and American films, though none yet draw on the Lagercrantz or Smirnoff continuation novels.