New Millennium Book Prompted Mankell To Change Will

It was announced yesterday that David Lagercrantz would write a further two books in the Millennium series.

The original trilogy was authored by Stieg Larsson, but he never knew of his books’ enormous popularity because he died of a heart attack in 2004, just before The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was published.

Then, two years ago, it was announced that David Lagercrantz would write a fourth book in the series (The Girl in the Spider’s Web) with the approval of Larsson’s father and brother. Stieg Larsson’s old friends called the decision grave robbing, whilst his partner Eva Gabrielsson told Dagbladet that she felt like Larsson’s characters has been kidnapped.

Now Gabrielsson is furious that Lagercrantz is to write two new books, and encourages other writers to guard against similar situations. In an article published in Expressen she says:

“Henning Mankell changed his last will after seeing what had happened to Stieg’s authorship – so, shortly before he died Mankell forbade any continuation of his Wallander books with publisher Dan Israel. The two were discussing this just before Mankell died on 5th October.”

“It is time for more (authors) to do the same as Mankell,” writes Gabrielsson.