Saturday 23 April 2011

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ages ago and loved it. But such is the wealth of choice on my TBR shelf it has taken me until now to get to the sequel.

In this story Lisbeth Salander comes back to Stockholm after over a year away travelling. She has broken all contact with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist and sets about making a new life, buying an apartment, furniture from IKEA and a second-hand car, just like a normal person. But Salander is not normal, she is obsessively secretive about herself, doesn't let anyone know her new address, buys the apartment under a false name and still sometimes goes about in disguise.

Meanwhile, at Millennium magazine, Blomkvist and his colleagues are preparing a special edition about the sex industry. This involves making contact with some very unsavoury and dangerous individuals.

The two stories collide when two people who are providing most of the information for the Millennium special edition are murdered and Salander is implicated in their deaths.

I enjoyed this book just as much as the first. It moves along at a cracking pace, and packs in the information. There were a couple of times I had to refer back to check something I'd missed at first read. I thought that Blomkvist took a back seat and it was more Salander's story.

It seems a bit redundant to recommend a book which is an international best seller and phenomenon, but I do anyway.

3 comments:

  1. I wholeheartedly agree with you. But do you have book 3 - I had to go straight from book 2 to 3 because of the suspense!

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  2. I think the series was originally intended to be about Salander rather than Blomkvist, hence the titles. I'll be interested in what you think about the third book, especially the way in which it ends.

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  3. I've only read the first one. It's not the kind of thing I usually read, but I have to say I got intrigued and quite enjoyed it. I must read this one before I forget who all the characters are!

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