Stieg’s Stand-in

This will either be good news or a source of frustration for all of those enthusiastic eaders, especially in the United States, who were disappointed that Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson died after writing only three novels. From The Guardian:

Stieg Larsson’s partner Eva Gabrielsson plans to finish the fourth novel he left uncompleted on his death. According to early details culled from Gabrielsson’s memoir of her life with Larsson, Millennium, Stieg and Me, which is set for publication in France and Scandinavia next week, Larsson had written 200 pages of a fourth novel in his internationally successful Millennium series before he died. Gabrielsson wants to complete it because, she says, “Stieg and I often wrote together.”

Larsson’s partner has refused to reveal details of the partially completed novel’s plot, but promised that its charismatic but damaged protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, “little by little frees herself from her ghosts and her enemies.” And, she said, she will only finish the book when she gets undisputed rights to Larsson’s work from his family, who inherited the author’s assets when he died intestate.

Uh-oh. Considering the intense dispute between Gabrielsson and Larsson’s family over profits made in the last few years by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels, that demand for “undisputed rights” may be a serious sticking point.