‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’ by Stieg Larsson

  Readers who liked “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson will love the second book in the trilogy, “The Girl Who Played with Fire.”
  While in the last book, journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander hunted for a serial killer, in the new book it’s Salander herself who is being hunted.
  The young, tattooed savant becomes the focus of a police manhunt after two of Blomkvist’s friends are murdered while investigating the sex trade industry. Blomkvist is certain of Salander’s innocence, and he launches his own inquiry, beginning with the high-profile story his friends were working on, one that implicates powerful people with much to lose.
  While Blomkvist investigates the murders, Salander is on the run, but it’s not just the police pursuing her, some very dangerous criminals would like nothing more than to see her dead, and her flight from them will have her facing demons from her past.
  Readers will learn much more about the mysterious Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” and the obsessively private, quirky young woman will have her dirty laundry aired before all of Sweden.
  This sequel seems to have fewer umlauts peppering the text than the previous novel, but American readers will have to negotiate the unfamiliar Swedish names, though by the success of the first book that seems to be a challenge American readers are happy to undertake.
  “The Girl Who Played with Fire” is thick with mystery and suspense, and fans will not be disappointed by rejoining these colorful characters. Blomkvist is still like a dog with a bone when he gets working on a story, and Salander is as hard-core and scrappy as ever.
  The only disappointment is that there is only one book left in the series, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” because the author died shortly after delivering the manuscripts for his three novels. But with this series, Larsson has certainly left his mark on crime fiction.