The Girl Who Played With Fire

Stieg Larsson's follow-up to the bestselling THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO picks up where the action left off for the two main characters, the journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his unlikely partner, the phenomenally intelligent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. As the book opens though, they are now separated a world apart, with Blomkvist back home in Sweden and Salander lounging on a Caribbean island. This separation is what drives the entirety of the novel, with Salander accused of a horrendous crime that soon forces her to go into hiding. While the characters that Larsson introduced in his first novel in the series are still just as interesting, and while here the reader is introduced to even more mysterious aspects about Salander's past, the fact is, there is something missing.

Pitting Salander "against the world" and having her exist in isolation throughout the majority of the book is what leads to this being not as strong of a novel as its predecessor, because what is now absent is the interplay between the two main characters that made THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO so intriguing. The dynamics that existed between Blomkvist and Salander as he tried to decipher the enigmatic nature of her personality is what made the first novel so unlike any others of its genre, but now that the characters are forced apart and are no longer able to really share a scene together, a large portion of the story's appeal is lost in the process. This has the effect of magnifying weaknesses in Larsson's storytelling. In THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Larsson would focus on revealing key details of the plot through scenes where one character would simply be telling another about it instead of letting them discover it through action. While this slowed down the pacing significantly, the conflict between the two main characters helped maintain the reader's interest and served to keep the pacing going at an effective pace. In THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE though, once again key elements of the plot are revealed in almost a deus ex machina fashion, materializing out of the blue and being explained away in mere dialogue. Stripping away the relationship between Salander and Blomkvist then keeps the pacing very slow, and the intensity of the building action that was so dominant in the first novel is now not achieved.

Having these important elements about Salander's past that she is so intensely private about being brought to light while she was working alongside of Blomkvist would have had a much greater impact on the overall plot of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, and would have furthered the conflict between the two main characters and thus made for a more exciting read. Instead though, having the characters separated throughout leads to more of a reactionary catalyst for the characters' development, instead of having a more proactive approach that would have in turn, helped drive the action.

This separation that forces the main characters into more of a reactionary mode also has the effect of weakening the overall dialogue found in the novel. Characters come off as not being as genuine as they were in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and in some instances, become nothing more than a stereotype. A prime example of this is the character of Faste, a detective working on the case who at all times remains misogynistic without ever showing any other facet of his character. In fact, these misogynistic overtones that seem to crop up throughout the novel, with Salander and other female characters constantly being referred to as "bitches," "whores," and even much worse, grows very tiresome and ends up diluting the overall effectiveness of the story Larsson is attempting to tell.

At the heart of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is what could have been a very compelling story dealing with the growing problem of the illegal sex trade that has been becoming more rampant throughout the EU in recent years. Larsson though relegates this plot point to a subordinate position to the murder investigation that is instead made central to the story. Had he tied these two elements together more cohesively, a much stronger novel would have emerged and a much more powerful sequel to his first Blomkvist/Salander novel would have been created in the process, allowing the dynamic between the two characters to be explored more thoroughly. Whereas before Larsson took the reader on a journey that built to an incredible conclusion that would not let the reader put down the book, here the denouement of the novel seems forced, and unfortunately the climax thus degenerates into a level that borders on absurdity and the fantastical.

The late Stieg Larsson is a good writer, and the characters he created in Blomkvist and Salander are very intriguing, they just work much better when paired together and allowed to have their conflict flourish. While THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE could have used some redirection and some overall editorial polishing, it still should be read by those who are interested in learning about Lisbeth Salander, a character I had previously dubbed to be one of the most fascinating to be found in modern literature.