The Girl Who Played with Fire

I didn't expect to make it up the list so fast for Stieg Larson's second book in the Millennium series, The Girl Who Played With Fire. But, I did! So, I put my other book on hold so make it through this one. If you haven't read Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, start there. Just a suggestion. Girl Who Played with Fire picks up where Dragon Tattoo left off.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is riding the publicity wave off his book about his side of the Wennerstrom affair published by his magazine, Millennium. His relationship with hacker Lisbeth Salander has fizzled to nothing. In fact, Lisbeth has just spent the past 2 years since Hedestad incident out of the country, traveling around, doing her hacking, etc. and so on. Another writer named Dag approaches Blomkvist and Berger, Millennium's editor in chief, about publishing his book about sex trafficking. His girlfriend Mia has also been researching and writing about the topic. Together, they plan to expose the roles policeman and low ranking criminals in the sex trafficking business.

One night after Lisbeth returns to Stockholm, Dag and Mia are found murdered. Lisbeth's prints happen to be on the murder weapon and she is accused of committing the murders, and the murder of her guardian, Nils Bjurman. Trouble is, the authorities can't track her down. Blomkvist is convinced Lisbeth is innocent. The police are convinced she's guilty. What ensues is a breath-taking race against time for everyone!

Again, that was a super brief and full of holes summary of The Girl Who Played with Fire because I don't want to give anything away. I really liked this one! I think it was better than Dragon Tattoo because we were already familiar with the characters. Larson's first book had a lot of exposition and this one cut down on that. Read this one for sure!

I'm 20th out of 73 on the hold list for his latest (post-humous) release, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I'm hoping I'll make it to #1 by Labor Day for the cruise. I think it would be a great vacation read.