The Girl Who Played with Fire: A Lisbeth Salander Novel

I could not stop until the end, and even then I needed more! The action draws the reader into a complex web that is beautifully written and compelling.

This is another instalment of the Girl with the Dragon tattoo. I saw the original movie in swedish with subtitles. Then started the books now I'm reading them all again.

Excellent! Never disappointing and hard to put down. I really appreciate the life the author, Stieg Larsson, brought to these books telling the tales of Lisbeth Salander. He had such talent as a writer and how sad it is he died before what should have been his time. These books are exceptional thrillers and I had great difficulty stopping myself from continuing to read each night because the storyline is easy to immerse yourself in so deeply you don’t want to come back out. I only wish that the English director and producer that had brought The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to film in Hollywood would highly consider making the rest of these books into movies. They are stories that deserve to be told and even with the human trafficking that goes on in our world even now. Lisbeth Salander is a heroine to so many women including myself who would’ve liked to have handled such violently abusive treatment by such ruthless tyrants in such a manner as she had. The story of her life though sorrowful in its depths is still about unwavering strength and resilience in the face of unquestionable adversity. I highly recommend these books. This is actually my second time around reading them yet again.

I like me some Scandinavian crime stories, and for a guy who was defining his adulthood around 2006 when the first Larsson book dropped stateside, the Millennium trilogy is what introduced an entire generation to the subgenre.My exposure to the story had been entirely informed by the franchise's life in film, until I read Girl With the Dragon Tattoo last year.I really appreciate that this book isn't simply a retread of the first book's dynamic, with a new mystery inserted into the plot. The characters have grown, they're different, their dynamic is different, and the setting is different.There is something to be said that these books, along with many others in the crime genre, deal with less than perfect people, undergoing horrific events, and solving things in a less-than-perfect way. To that end there are discussions around how some characters, specifically women and people who are neurodivergent, are portrayed and treated in the book. I think there is a very valid basis for those critiques, but I also have to admit that I've never turned to crime stories for aspirational or well represented heroes.I did really like the investigative aspects of this story, with a three-prong approach working in tandem: The rogue investigator playing for herself, the police investigators doing their job, and the journalists seeking justice. The result was a captivatingly dark story with memorable characters and a thrilling climax that runs right to the last page.

I usually read the book before seeing a movie version of a novel, but after seeing the girl with the dragon tattoo I had to also read the book. The unique and super smart Lisbeth Salander has a troubled past and it has made her fiercely independent and suspicious of everyone. This fantastic 500 page hardcover novel (The Girl who played with fire by Stieg Larsson) begins where the first book (Girl with the dragon tattoo) ends. Some of the same characters (Mikael Blomkvist, journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, and the creepy Advokat Nils Erik Bjurman, who raped Lisbeth Salander in the first book) are in this book.After the short prologue, this novel begins with Lisbeth Salander on a long vacation since she now had the funds to do as she wants and there were fewer assignments she was getting for her investigative expertise. When she arrived back in Sweden she rented a new apartment and went shopping to furnish her apartment. She had avoided any recent contact with Mikael Blomkvist, even though they had been lovers for a short time while she helped him investigate a serial killer (See The girl with the dragon tattoo).In this page turning novel, the Millennium has agreed to investigate the sex slave trade in Sweden doing a series of feature articles on the subject along with publishing a book on the investigation. I never like to give away too much information when reviewing novels because it spoils it for the reader. When Salander’s finger prints are found on a murder weapon, Blomkvist does not believe she had anything to do with the murders and now they wind up working together to solve the murders.If you are into tight mysteries with plenty of suspense and gritty action this is a book you will enjoy reading. The writer spins the story which makes you eager to turn the pages to see what happens next.Rating: 5 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: Tactical principles of the most effective combative systems).