For some strange reason, I always gravitate towards "part 2." I love Bride of Frankenstein, The Empire Strikes Back, Godfather II, and even Back to the Future 2. There's always something about the second act, something dark and sometimes melancholy, which attracts me. The same holds true for the second book in Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy," The Girl Who Played with Fire.
The second book to feature Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander is more personal than the first. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Blomkvist and Salander were brought together investigating a mystery involving other characters. In Fire, the duo are wrapped up in Salander's past, which comes rushing into a collision course with the present.
Blomkvist is back at Millennium Magazine where he is working with a freelance journalist on publishing a huge expose on Sweden's sex traffic industry with Eastern Europe. The journalist and his girlfriend (who is doing a thesis on the same topic) are murdered and Lisbeth Salander is blamed. It's up to Blomkvist to team with the always anti-social "Wasp" (Salander) to solve the crime. But in the middle of it all lurks a shadowy figure from Salander's past, one who holds the key to the way she is, and why she is--quite-literally--the girl who played with fire.
The second and third books in the series (the newly-released--in the US at least--The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest) are essentially one big book. And Larsson stumbles a bit on two fronts, more so in the third than the second: He keeps Blomkvist and Salander physically apart and he introduces too many new characters. The books are well-written and compelling throughout, but they really leap to life when the two main characters interact, whether it be in person (mainly--and sadly--confined to the first book), or on the Internet. The second book has an extended sequence at the very beginning with Salander on her own. She is, in my opinion, one of the best mystery characters to come to life in the past decade, and when she's absent from the pages of her own stories, it's disappointing.
And when just about the entirety of Sweden's police force seems to get involved in the Salander case, Larsson introduces us to quite a few of them, some good, some bad. While the necessary business of solving the murders of the journalist and his girlfriend are the backdrop, I couldn't help think of Lost and how the producers and writers of the now departed TV series continually found new ways to introduce new characters. Some were necessary for the progression of a very complicated storyline; others were just so much filler. And that's the way I feel about Larsson's additions in Fire: so much filler for the most part.
Still, there's something very dark and very sinister at the heart of this second book, and I think that's what appeals to me so much. I could happily read a new Salander novel every few months. Sadly, Larsson died after the third book was completed (rumors of a fourth book may never come to life). So I guess all we fans have left is the movie versions--both Swedish and American--to look forward to.
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