The Girl Who Played With Fire

Having enjoyed "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" so much I jumped right in to Stieg Larsson's sequel "The Girl Who Played with Fire." From the book cover:

"Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing expose on social injustices, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel.

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander's innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past."

I enjoyed the second entry into the Millennium series as much as the first novel, if not more. The story nearly picks up directly after the events of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" with all the same characters and a few new ones. Again what makes the novels so strong, for me, is the great characters, namely Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Though, I did feel that this story was a little more spread around to many characters where the first story was dominated primarily by Blomkvist and secondarily by Salander.

Much like the first novel the pacing of the story in parts can be frantic, there were times, especially near the conclusion, that it was hard for me to put the book down. Larsson does a masterful job of weaving together a fairly complicated story that I had no trouble following. Much like the first novel, the book is a little long winded at around 630 pages and some of the translations from Swedish can be a little odd. Overall a great novel and series, recommended. Read these books.