Bookshot #14: The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire starts with a bang and never lets up until the final page- and, point of fact, leaves you hanging on the final page, desperately hoping for more and practically screaming for someone to give you the third book in the trilogy so you can find out what happens. Yeah, that slow start and meandering pace of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? Gone. Larsson wastes not a word, not a page of your time with this one and, once again, the result is a fantastically taut thriller that grabs you and refuses to let go and leaves the reader desperate for more by the final page.

All the usual suspects from the first book are back for the second: Kalle Blomkvist is now back to being a successful journalist. Lisbeth Salander stole a bunch of money at the end of Book 1 and is travelling the world, enjoying exotic locales and generally not worrying about life all that much. And then that ever-crusading news magazine Millennium takes on an expose of the sex worker industry and the story really takes off. When two of the writers are found murdered and Salander is implicated, Blomkvist is, of course, convinced of her innocence and sets out to clear her of the murders. What follows is an intriguing, shocking and suspenseful descent into the dark past of Salander and her connection to the brutal underworld of the sex trade.

Without revealing too much, I can safely say this is a satisfying sequel to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo- pretty much giving the reader what they want and leaving them wanting more (while also leaving our heroes facing an uncertain future at the end of the book, just like the Empire Strikes Back. Is it weird that trilogies function in the same way that Star Wars does? Did Star Wars make the rules for trilogies or did trilogies make the rules for Star Wars? Deep and meaningful question, kids- discuss!) But anyway, The Girl Who Played With Fire proves to be more than up to the task of continuing the story of Salander, Blomkvist and company. What proves surprising is that while in the first book Salander is presented as some sort of weird anti-heroine, basically good, but willing to kick the shit out of you if the occasion demands it, in the second book, Larsson gets into the head of Salander a bit more with this one- you find out what makes her tick and gain large amount of insight into just why she is the way she is (it's a dark and unpleasant reason, believe me- but one that I'm not willing to spoil for all 'yall)

Another interesting aside: mathematics. While The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo dangled nuggets about violence against women in Sweden, there's more of a direct connection with the 'flavor' of this book to the narrative at large, namely Salander's new obsession with mathematics. She devours whole textbooks of the stuff and at the end of the book has an astonishing insight into the real solution behind Femat's famously unsolved but now solved last theorum. What that insight is, unfortunately is not revealed, but Salander thinks it's pretty damn cool. It's an interesting plot device that Larsson employed in the first book to great effect- the underlying theme of the first book involving horrible violence against women, it made sense to throw some statistics at the reader, to make them see how his story connected to reality. How mathematics connects to this book, other than to explain how Salander's mind works is something of an open question, but it's use as a 'flavor' of sorts to the book is done effectively enough, I'll admit.

This is hard to wrap up without spoiling anything, but you need to read this book. If The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was too slow, too boring or just plain overrated in your mind, do yourself a favor and give this writer and his amazing characters a second try- like fine wine, it seems Larsson gets better as he goes along- and I can't wait to see what volume 3 has in store for me.