The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

It's been a year since we last left Kalle Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander after their investigation into the Vanger family and the Werrenstrom affair (The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo).  Lisbeth, nursing a wounded heart has fled the country and is running around the world.

Blomkvist is still helping manage Millenium, and has taken on a new book to publish and new expose that will reveal how bad the sex trafficking trade is in Sweden, and how much government officials are involved.

When the writer of the new book and his girlfriend are murdered, and Lisbeth's fingerprints are found on the gun, she is the immediate suspect due to her convoluted and disasterous past.  She has very few friends but Blomkvist believes her to be innocent.

Thus starts his research into who the real murder is, and his hunt for both Salander and the killer.

This book is much faster paced then the first one.  Mostly because all the characters involved in the Vanger family just confused me.  There were a lot of needless characters in this book too (lots of police offers and investigators that had no purpose) but the action moved things along.  Salander is nonexistent in part three of the book which is drives you on because you really want to know her side.  But she doesn't just come out and tell us, she never does.

I'm interested to see how the third book wraps this all up.  The sex trafficking has been a theme in both the first two and I suspect it will all be revealed in the final chapter.  At least, I hope so.  Lots of what's written in these books is based on real crime statistics for Sweden.  Who knew they had such a human trafficking problem?  Or a domestic abuse problem?

Will read the next one.  Too bad Larsson is dead.  His books have already been made into films in Sweden and Hollywood is making their own versions too.  I hope the members of his estate are putting the money to good use.