The Girl Who Played with Fire

I went about this all wrong and totally backwards. Most people read a book and if they like it, read the sequel. Perhaps they see the movie adaptation and let's face it, most are disappointed because a 2 hour movie can't come close to the magic of a book. Well when it comes to the Millennium Trilogy, I was totally ass-about-face!

Instead I saw the film first (which was by accident, I was tagging along with a friend because she had to see it for her work at the university). The film is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I was blow away (and wrote a review of it which you can read here). The Swedish title translated is actually 'Men Who Hate Women' (which really makes sense once you see it). Anyway, so blown away was I by the writing, the suspense, the characters, that I immediately ran out to read the sequel!

The Girl Who Played with Fire takes place two years after the first book ends. Lisbeth Salander, our heroine, has been traveling the word with her newly acquired wealth (wealth she acquired with her genius hacker skills). She comes home to Sweden to start a new life, one that is precisely the way she is:  very compartmentalized and very secret. Mikhail Bloomquist, the journalist and hero of the first book, is still working at the magazine Millennium. He's not had contact with Lisbeth for over a year (she inexplicably vanished from his life). With two other journalists, he's working on a huge expose on sex-trafficking in Sweden that will expose politicians, police officers, other journalists and crime king-pins once it's published.

What unfolds is either a story of a psychotic-lesbian-satanist-on a revenge-fueled murder spree, or perhaps the coldblooded murders are connected to something else, something very dark and sinister indeed. Both possible scenarios have the same person in common: Lisbeth Salander.

The first in this trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, can easily stand alone as its own book. There's a distinct beginning, middle and end. Not so with the second installment. There's no doubt after finishing The Girl Who Played with Fire that I must read the final in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Not only because I have to see what happens to Lisbeth, but because these books are gripping, graphic, fascinating and page turners.

I think...this book is so good I experienced palpable disappointment when it came to an end. Having said that, I would suggest you read (or see) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo first to be able to fully appreciate the picture the author is creating. 

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