The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

I devoured the first book in The Millenium series. The second one took a bit longer-vacation was over, after all. I have struggled with the third one for two weeks and thrown in the towel. What changed? The pace of the story. Even though the first two weren't action-packed, Blomkvist and Salander were constantly digging and figuring things out. In the third book, our two main characters are absent from the narrative much of the time. I am invested in those characters, not the new people from Sapo (the Swedish version of the CIA). Not even Berger, Blomkvist's married lover. I want Blomkvist and Salander, preferably interacting with each other. But they've been separated since the beginning of book 2. It's always hard to say whether the problem is with the original author or the translator. Did Larsson go on too long explaining the history of Sapo and reminding the reader of every little detail about our heroes? Or did the translator think we, as Americans, needed more explanation of how things are done in exotic Sweden? In the end it doesn't matter. The story became bogged down, and I didn't care to slog through it. So I turned to end to make see how it turned out, and put the book back on the shelf. It was a sad end to what started as such a fun ride.