It's a tragedy for world literature that Stieg Larsson is dead, and we'll never have more than three books with Lisbeth Salander as the heroine. She's an absolutely fascinating creation. This is the second book in the series, and every bit as riveting as The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo.
In the eyes of Sweden's social services system, Salander is a deeply disturbed person who needs a guardian to supervise her and handle all her affairs. But unbeknownst to the authorities, she's a world-class hacker with a photographic memory, brilliant at chess, wildly rich from an Internet coup - and a vicious fighter. For relaxation, she has sex with men or women, as the spirit moves her, and reads books on spherical astronomy and higher mathematics. All this in a very small package: Salander stands less than five feet tall and weighs 90 pounds.
The plot of this book is too complex and full of twists and shocks to summarize. But to oversimplify, three people are murdered because of a book two of them are writing about sex trafficking, and Salander, by a quirk of circumstantial evidence, becomes the prime suspect.
Salander is in hiding for much of the book, baffling all the cops, well-wishers and thugs looking for her, while doing her own highly irregular detective work.
In her twenty-five years of life, Salander has come in for a lot of sexual abuse. But she also has a genius for pay back. Her unique display of brains and aggression is utterly satisfying.
The characters in this book are wonderfully drawn, the pace breathtaking and the fight scenes terrific. I can't wait to read the third book in the series.
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