The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

OK, so I apologize this post has taken so long. This book took me around three weeks to finish. It's long and complicated - a difficult combination for a slow, analytical reader like myself. So sorry y'all. Let's get right into it.

You may remember my previous review of Stieg Larsson's first book in his Millennium trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. As an aside, I hear Hollywood is in talks to make an English language Dragon Tattoo movie starring Daniel Craig - 007 himself - as Blomkvist. Yum! And Kristen Stewart from Twilight as Salander. Blech!

Anyhoo, I digress...In Larsson's second installment, The Girl Who Played With Fire, we revisit the lives of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Just a quick refresher: Blomkvist is an investigative journalist and quite the ladies man. Salander is an emo computer hacker with a troubled past. The book opens with Salander lounging poolside in Grenada. It seems Salander has absconded with a sizable sum of money and taken an extended vacation. This portion of the book is entirely pointless and has no bearing on the rest of the story so I shall move on.

Blomkvist and his magazine, Millennium, have been approached by a freelance journalist with a provocative and explosive story on sex trafficking. The journalist, Dag Svensson, and his girlfriend, Mia Johansson have been researching underage sex trafficking from the Baltics to Sweden for some time. Johansson is researching for her PHD thesis. Svensson's goal is to write an expose for Millennium magazine, with an accompanying book, on the crime. Both plan to personally name the customers keeping the underage prostitute ring in business - many of whom are quite prominent members of society.

That is until Svensson and Johansson turn up dead in their apartment just before the book and magazine go to print. Unfortunately for Salander, her finger prints are all over the gun and the couple's apartment. Also unfortunately for Salander, her court appointed dirtbag legal advocate turns up dead across town in his apartment. Bad day for Salander.

Salander goes underground working from her home computer and incognito to solve the murders before the police investigators catch up with her. Blomkvist, her sole ally, works from the outside to clear her name. Meanwhile, the true murderer is still on the loose and possibly hunting for Salander next.

A few observations first:

1. What is Larsson's obsession with coffee? I mean, really? His books are full of people going to get coffee, making coffee, brewing coffee, pouring coffee, offering coffee to other people. If he left all the coffee references out of his books, they would be 100 pages shorter.


2. What is Larsson's obsession with the minutia of his characters' lives? The above coffee references aside, every crumb of food they eat, every stitch of clothing they put on their bodies and every step they take is described in excruciating detail. I know authors need to paint a picture for a novel to be engaging but there has got to be a line somewhere.

OK, I had to get that off my chest. It's been bugging me.

I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as the first in the series. It was very hard get in to, for one thing. Both books are slow starters but Dragon Tattoo grabbed me much earlier and kept me engrossed, while Fire really drug on without ever snagging me fully.

And to make matters worse, it's a cliffhanger. I HATE cliffhangers. When I finish a book, I want it finished, dammit! This book took me three freaking weeks to read and now I have to read another book the same size or bigger just to see what happens. Never mind that I was going to read the next one anyway. It's the fact that I HAVE to read it that chaps me.

Another problem I had with this book, more so than the first, was the deadend story lines. I mentioned Salanders magical mystery tour of the Caribbean above. I thought maybe something would come of it but nada. There is also a small deadend subplot that involves Salander's studying mathematical theory. We get it - she's a genius. Don't talk about it for chapters on end unless it's going to have some bearing on the plot. My point is Larsson seems to have lost his edit button between the two books. Either that or he was consciencely looking for filler and in that case, he should have nixed the filler and combined the second and third into one book.

All that being said, there are some good things about the book. I know it hasn't sounded like it so far but trust me. It's decent. Thankfully, it's less violent than the first. That's a huge plus. And there are parts of the book that are quite engaging. Larsson can weave a story. The world he has created is exact and precise. Every detail is covered which, as I mentioned, can get tiresome at times. But the man had an imagination, that's for sure. He had the ability to create a world in his brain and put it down on paper to the smallest detail. That impresses me.

Overall I give The Girl Who Played With Fire two and a half bows . There's a good chance I would have given it a higher rating had it not been a cliffhanger. And it was really hard to judge the book on it's own. Comparisons to the first were inevitable so the above rating is really a reflection of my opinion of the second as compared to the first book. Dragon Tattoo was so good. Fire just couldn't live up to it. I am wholly optimistic, however, that the third installment, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest redeems the trilogy. I have already purchased it but will be taking a short respite before reading it - a palate cleanser of sorts - and reading a book or two on the "to read" shelf.

In the meantime, let me know what you thought of the book. I know there's a bunch of you out there that disagree with me. But until then, happy reading!