Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Author: Stieg Larsson

# pages: 503

Date published: 2009

Genres: thriller

Rating:

 (Highly recommended) 

First sentence:

"She lay on her back fastened by leather straps to a narrow bed with a steel frame."

What’s it about? The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second book in Larrson's Millennium trilogy. The first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, introduces Mikael Blomkvist, a magazine writer and publisher, and Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant computer hacker and private investigator, of sorts, who has some serious personal issues. Some of these issues come to a head in The Girl Who Played with Fire when three people are murdered and all the evidence points to Lisbeth.  

Random thoughts: I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last year for my F2F book club and throughly enjoyed it, so I put this book on my wish list and I wasn't disappointed. It's just as fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thrilling as the first book was. For some reason, the characters in these books are oddly fascinating for me and I can't stop reading about them once I start! The last book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, is due out May 25, 2010 and as soon as I can get it in e-book format I'll read that one, too.  Unfortunately, Larsson died in 2004 so that will be the last one :(.

About the Author:

Stieg Larsson, who lived in Sweden, was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Expoand a leading expert on antidemocratic right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations. He died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for his Millennium novels, a trilogy of thrillers that became international bestsellers.

Fun tidbits:

• For more information about Stieg Larsson, visit his web site

Recommended for: anyone who enjoys gripping thrillers. However, if you're squeamish, you might want to look elsewhere. The violence in the Millennium trilogy can get fairly graphic.