Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Played with Fire

Review by Malcolm Martland on show 28th Jan 2010.
This is a remarkable sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and is the second novel in the Millennium Trilogy. Mikael Blomquist and his former girlfriend Lisbeth Salander are now estranged and have had no contact for over two years. Mikael runs a magazine called Millennium and is about to publish a story about prostitution in Sweden written by two colleagues. There is bound to be a scandal because it involves police officers, politicians and other celebrities. Lisbeth meanwhile has come back to wreak revenge on her guardian who has been abusing her. She was put into guardianship following mental reviews which were not totally without bias and political motive.

However, the two journalists who had written the story are found by Mikael, brutally murdered and the gun used to kill them is found at the scene. Lisbeth Salander’s fingerprints are all over the gun which the police soon find out is registered to her guardian. But when they contact her guardian they find that he too has been shot.

Lisbeth has made a fortune out of computer hacking and has bought a luxury apartment under a false name where she hides and waits to see what happens. The Police meanwhile identify Lisbeth as the prime suspect but Mikael refuses to admit that his friend could have carried out such a cold-blooded murder. He does not know why she won’t talk to him and has only seen her once in the street in the previous two years-she ignored him totally. The reality is that she has fallen in love with him but refuses to succumb to such weakness. Mikael knows that she hacks into his computer account so he creates a folder bearing her name and leaves her a message offering help and asks who is responsible for the murders. He receives a one word reply Zala.

Zala is Zalachenko who turns out to be a defected Russian spy who has been given a new identity by an earlier Swedish government but who has since just become a common thug, and he just happens to be Lisbeth’s father who she tried to kill when she was 12.

Zala also has a giant of a son who can feel no pain and together they recruit the local hells angels to track down Lisbeth and eliminate her. The body count quickly rises. Faced with complete stupidity by the local police Mikael undertakes to solve the mystery himself.

The whole story is very much like a fast paced John le Carré spy thriller and a great read. The ending is a brutal cliff-hanger. However, unlike the previous novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is a complete novel, the Girl Who Played with Fire continues almost seamlessly into the third novel, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larssen
Review by Malcolm F. Martland 28 January 2010