After previously watching the American version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the Swedish trilogy of the series "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", I decided to read these books. I purchased the three books ("The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl that Played with Fire", and "The Girl that Kicked the Hornet's Nest") from a thrift store. After reading the first book of the series, I immediately picked up the second book and started reading. This is a book review for the second of that series - "The Girl that Played with Fire".
"The Girl who Played with Fire"
Author: Stieg Larsson
Language Read: English
Published: 2006
Genre: Crime, mystery, thriller
Finished reading this book: January 10, 2020
Plot
After solving the Harriet Verger case and resolving the Wennerström libel suit against Blomkvist, Lisbeth Salander (having stolen money from Wennerström's failing empire) decided to go for a vacation and to improve herself. She has stopped communicating with Blomkvist, having felt shunned by him previously when she almost gave him a gift, but she still keeps tabs on him via his computer. When a new writer enters Blomkvist's magazine department with an idea about sex trafficking in Sweden, Lisbeth takes interest. Soon, however, the new writer is found dead and Lisbeth is blamed for it.
As Mikael (the one person that thinks that Lisbeth is not responsible for the murders of the writer and the writer's girlfriend) and Lisbeth (from the shadows) research into what is going on with the murders, they find a web of issues and connections that tie further back in time to Lisbeth's past. Can she deal with her past without getting killed? Is it possible to solve these murderers and catch those responsible?
Review
3.5/5 -
*SPOILERS*
The book starts off slow and monotonous. Lisbeth is a great character, even after siphoning money from Wernerstrom back in the first book, and she shows it from the beginning. The plot doesn't really get interesting until 1/3rd into the book when Daag Svensson and his girlfriend Johansson were murdered. The questions from that point on are who did it (why are they all blaming Lisbeth and is she the one who actually did it?), why did they do it (was it connected to the prostitution expose that Svensson and Johansson were working on or was it for a different reason?), and how do they get closure for what has happened? The investigations by the police, Millenium and Milton Security slowly each pull information out about the situation, but Lisbeth's investigation into Zala (Zalachenko, her father) leads the plotline further.
Turns out that Zalachenko is a Russian defector that got protection from the Swedish government years way back when. He impregnated Lisbeth's mother (with Lisbeth and her twin sister) and never agreed to marry her. Being a nasty drunk, he would constantly beat Lisbeth's mother and no police would help her because of Zalachenko's protection. So Lisbeth took the initiative to protect her mother - she threw a homemade Molotov cocktail made from a milk carton into his car as he was about to leave, burning him, disfiguring him, and causing him lose his foot via amputation. Of course, he never forgot. She had been sent to a psych ward thanks to the government protecting Zalachenko, where she was abused, and was given a record of being mentally ill though she had only tried to get help to protect her mother. The reports of that time also pushed the police to suspect her more, on top of circumstantial evidence.
Bjurman had been associated with Zalachenko back when he defected from Russia and, because he was annoyed and angry at Lisbeth, asked for Zalachenko's help to get rid of Lisbeth. Zalachenko sent his son (Niedermann, the German-born giant that has a medical disorder that doesn't allow him to feel pain) to Bjurman to settle the issue right as Lisbeth was talking with Svensson/Johansson about Zala. Lisbeth blamed herself for giving Svensson the link between Bjurman and Zala because Niedermann killed Bjurman, drove to Svensson/Johansson's place and killed them. If she hadn't asked about if there was a link between Bjurman and Zala, then Svensson and Johansson probably wouldn't have been killed. It just so happened that Lisbeth had touched the gun previously (2 years ago when she was getting Bjurman back for raping her) and Niedermann had used gloves. So, that's why the police thought she was the main suspect for the murders.
So, what happened? Lisbeth tracked down Niedermann and Zalachenko, went after them, and they saw her on surveillance camera and took her down. They took her out to be killed but she tried to cause as much damage as she could and tried to get away. However, Zalachenko shot her three times: hip, shoulder and right by one ear. The head wound took her down, they dropped her in a freshly dug hole, buried her without making sure she was dead, and left. Fortunately for her, she didn't die from the shot, had enough air in the grave to breathe, and hadn't been crushed to death by the ground because it was light and sandy. She managed to dig herself out and walk away from the site, but unfortunately managed to walk back to Zalachenko's farmhouse. They didn't see her in the cameras this time because she came from a different direction. She wanted to set the place ablaze so she went into a woodshed, but no gasoline or other way to start a fire. Zalachenko heard the commotion and came to investigate, where he was whacked twice by Lisbeth with an axe. He went down with the axe but didn't die. Niedermann heard Zalachenko screaming so he came to investigate. Seeing Lisbeth looking worse than a zombie, his fear of the dark and seeing her made him panic and run away. He just so happened to be on the road looking for a ride when Blomkvist came driving up, looking for Lisbeth. Blomkvist tied him up to a road sign, found the farmhouse with Zalachenko moaning in pain in the woodshed and with Lisbeth barely alive lying on a bench in the kitchen. Blomkvist called emergency services and the story abruptly ended.
I disliked the fact that the end had almost NO finality. So Berger is going to leave Millennium and hasn't told anyone except her husband (left that to the very end too!), Zalachenko is in the woodshed, Niedermann is tied up to a sign, Blomkvist is on the phone and is Lisbeth going to live? What are the police going to say over all of this? Are they going to charge Lisbeth for the damage that she did to Zalachenko and some other of his associates or are they going to let her go considering the evidence? No clue because the book just stopped. Seriously, worse than a Stephen King ending!!!
This book took me longer to read than "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" because the plot was just so slow that I opted many times to watch something over reading this. Once the homicides happened, I was more intrigued but it was still more of a "I like Lisbeth and want to know what happens to her" thing than "let's get this solved". To have the ending that it did made me feel angry that I had spent so much time and emotional investment into this book because I didn't get what I was looking for. I still plan to read the third book "The Girl That Kicked The Hornet's Nest" but I am not reaching for it immediately because I am bitter at the lack of conclusion the book made.
Let's say it like this: I own all 3 of the trilogy and I haven't even tried to read the third book because the ending of the second one left a bad taste in my mouth/mind.
I might try to read the third later but it has been over eight months since I finished the second one and other books come to mind before "The Girl that Kicked the Hornet's Nest". However, there is hope because I bought a copy of the fourth book. Stieg Larsson only wrote three books of the Millennium series (passed away in 2004 before the books were actually published) but another author (David Lagercrantz) picked up where he left off and wrote three more books for the series: "The Girl in the Spider's Web", "The Girl who Takes an Eye for an Eye", and "The Girl Who Lived Twice". I bought "The Girl in the Spider's Web", so there is a chance that I may want to read the third book eventually. We'll see in the future about that.
"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was much more interesting to read. I would definitely still recommend the first book but this second one is more of a "you can read it because I won't stop you but I don't recommend it". Your tastes might like this book better than I did or even better than the first, but I am not pleased.
So, that's my book review. Not a bad book, slow first half, and an ending that was lack-luster. Definitely read the first book before this one because it piggybacks off of the first book.
Thanks for reading my review! More to come eventually.
1572.
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