The Girl Who Played with Fire

                   

TITLE:             The Girl Who Played with Fire

AUTHOR:         Stieg Larsson
PUBLISHER:    Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
DATE:               2009/Sweden 2010/US

SYNOPSIS:

     In book two in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are at it again.  While Salander is hopping around the Caribbean enjoying her new found money and freedom, Blomkvist is hard at work at the magazine, Millennium, this time getting ready to expose an extensive sex trafficking ring.  Suddenly, two people connected with the sex ring article are brutally murdered and all of the evidence points directly to Salander.
     Salander's rare genius keeps her presence hidden from the police while she investigates the murders herself.  Blomkvist, certain of Salander's innocence, is drawn into the investigation while searching for Salander himself.

MY REVIEW:

     Stieg Larsson does not fail in book two of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.  Sometimes series loose their thrill once the newness wears off.  Larsson keeps up the suspense in The Girl Who Played with Fire, including rich characters, evil antagonists, and plenty of twists and turns throughout.  The end leaves you hanging and, if you don't already have it, you will be running out to the store to purchase book three.  The first one hundred pages or so are a little slow but you need to hang in there.  As a matter of fact, consider it a break you didn't know you needed as the pace of the book hits a frenetic pace once the murders are discovered.  You will have a hard time putting the book down through the next five hundred pages, so make sure you don't start reading until Friday night, giving yourself the entire weekend to finish.  On a scale of 1-10 this is a solid 9.  More action in the first one hundred pages would have been nice, but I'm not sure how Larsson would have pulled this off.