MacLehose Press The Girl Who Played With Fire: A Dragon Tattoo story

Es la segunda vez que voy a leer los libros de Stieg Larsson. Regale "The girl who played with fire." Esta vez compré dos porque regalé uno y yo me quedo con el otro!

Its a very good book, a must read. Stieg larsson knows how to write a thrilling suspense/crime history. Every page i turn i get more in love with lisbeth salander.

Stieg Larsson is a writer with a social agenda. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (DRAGON TATTOO), he turns his lens to corporate corruption and sexual violence against women. In The Girl Who Played with Fire (FIRE), he focuses on the sex trade, and all of the corrupt journalists, police officers, and lawyers who collude with the thugs who trade in the trafficking of Eastern European women for sex. DRAGON TATTOO introduced us to a host of complex, fascinating characters--Lisbeth Salander, Mikael Blomkvist, Erika Berger, the staff of Millennium magazine, Nils Bjurman, Dragan Armansky, Holger Palmgren, and Mimmi--who are absolutely central to the plot of FIRE as well. In FIRE, crimes that surround the sex trade, including the murders of Bjurman, and two others, are woven into Salander's personal story and provide the key to her mysterious past. Salander is suspected of commiting these murders and yet readers know--or at least hope--that she is innocent. Involved, yes, but we must believe that she is somehow innocent. So, taking our cue from many of Larsson character, we put on the coffee, and delve into this wonderfully plotted thriller.The novel opens with a genius prologue. In it, we read of a young Salander who is being held captive by a malicious man who by all appearances seems to be emotionally and sexually abusing her, and subjecting her to sadistic practices and solitary confinement. Since the novel--and the three murders it needs to solve--revolves around the sex trade, I immediately assumed that Salander's mysterious past must have had some connection with the sex trade and that she herself possibly was one of the unlucky girls who was a victim of the trade.Through a clever plot twist, Larsson upends the assumptions that readers may have made in the prologue. It's not a sadistic sex offender or rapist like Nils Bjurman who is holding Salander captive, but (without giving it away) something much more mundane. So, the sadistic torture chamber a la Martin Vanger gives way to something more ordinary, which then allows Larsson to launch a biting social critique of some of the most commonplace social institutions.The plot of FIRE is complex, with a veritable menagerie of characters, and keeping them straight can be sometimes confusing. Milennium magazine is slated to publish a freelance writer's story on the sex trade (based on said writer's girlfriend's doctoral dissertation) when the two, shortly after a visit from Salander, are found murdered in their apartment. Not only this, but Nils Bjurman is found murdered in his apartment on the same night. Salander is pinned for the murders, and hides out from the authorities, using her amazing abilities to survey the scene through her laptop. The police launch an investigation and we meet a host of interesting detectives. Meanwhile, Blomkvist and Dragan Armansky, both of whom Salander has all but ignored for the past two years, both believe Salander is innocent and each investigates the crime. Keeping the threads of each investigation separate is a challenge for this reader.FIRE is different from DRAGON TATTOO in that it focuses mostly on the character of Lisbeth Salander. The middle section is largely a police procedural. FIRE does not delve into the horrific depths that DRAGON TATTOO did. If there is horror in FIRE, it lies in a family's dark secrets rather than a sadist's torture chamber, and the cruelty of one family member to another.Parts of the novel seemed improbable, and even bordered on the absurd. For example, the characters of Paolo Roberto and "The Giant" Niedermann seemed either unlikely to exist at all, or unrealistically "played" by the author in service of the plot's action scenes. I also found Salander's tenacious rebound in the novel's conclusion unlikely at best. (I was rooting for her all the way, no doubt, but felt the scene was a bit too far fetched.) The novel frames each section with an epigraph devoted to mathematical theorems. We discover that Salander is at work trying to solve Fermat's theorem. Yet what is the connection between Fermat's famous riddle and Salander's own personal quest to find resolution in her past? I read and reread the section, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how she solves the mathematical conundrum at the novel's conclusion.The novel introduces several elements that are not resolved at the end, but will presumably be taken care of in the third installation, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: What will Ericka Berger's professional fate be? What will come of Milennium magazine? And what was the significance of the crime that Salander witnessed while staying on Grenada?In my opinion, Larsson does an amazing job of writing a perfectly plotted thriller with a social conscience. I really liked how FIRE, like DRAGON TATTOO, takes up the issue of violence against women. There was surprisingly little said about the actual sex trade, but the novel did make unexpected forays into GLBT issues by introducing lesbian or bisexual characters, and showing the overwhelming prejudices that still exist on behalf of the police investigators and the media, who are quick to deploy vicious stereotypes. Larsson has created a gem in the character of Lisbeth Salander. I'm sure that readers of all political persuasions (and attitudes towards feminism and women's rights) will be rooting for this young woman who has been so victimized by male-dominated institutions and society's pervasive prejudices against women. (I guess that if the enlightened Scandinavian country of Sweden is still struggling with gender prejudice, then we all still are.)I thoroughly enjoyed FIRE, and could not put the book down until I had reached the conclusion. With that said, I felt that it did not live up to the heights achieved by DRAGON TATTOO, but I would imagine that it would be difficult to achieve such a literary feat twice in one's life. You must read this!

This is a worthy successor to Stieg Larsson's first novel in the Millennium Trilogy. Larsson, in fact, projected ten volumes in the series, but--regrettably--died after the first three novels were completed. The positive note here is that the third volume serves to bring closure to many issues raised in the first two, so readers are not left hanging, although some story lines cry out for development (e.g., whatever happened to Lisbeth Salander's twin sister?).In the first volume, we saw the developing relationship between investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, computer hacker extraordinaire, possessed of a photographic memory, and absolutely brilliant in many ways. For instance, note her chess play with her former supervisor, Holger Palmgren. As the text notes (Pages 160-161): "Salander sat there reading a book on the frequency calibration of radio telescopes in a weightless state. . .When Palmgren made his move she glanced up and moved her piece, apparently without studying the board, and went back to her back." This (as well as the other two books) has various characters label her as being dysfunctional, whether exhibiting Asperger's or some other condition. Not likely, given her special abilities. Indeed, the book has it that she actually solves Fermat's theorem cleanly (a mathematical puzzle that took centuries for a faux solution).We begin, I think, to understand her social problems right at the outset. She is bound in an institution for the mentally ill after she had taken action as part of the "All the Evil," in which she tossed a Molotov cocktail into a car being driven by the person who had brutally hurt her mother. The wretched monster? Let's call him Zala for now. . . . Instead of society treating her as a victim of viciousness (her mother had been brutalized by Zala over time), she is warehoused as a way of maintaining state secrets (Zala is protected by an office within Sweden's national intelligence apparatus).After the introduction alluded to above, we see Salander traveling the world, after having robbed a crooked billionaire of a portion of his fortune, thus making herself financially independent. She also distanced herself from Blomkvist, who had been her lover in the first novel, after he resumed his faithless ways (I see him as a bounder, to be honest--indeed, so does his sister, in her comments to Salander in the third book of the series). Blomkvist and his colleagues at Millennium magazine are working with Mia Johansson (a doctoral candidate) and Dag Svensson a freelance writer, readying a story on sex trafficking, the importation of women to serve as prostitutes in Sweden. This book, indeed the entire series, has a central focus on sexual politics, in sometimes the most tawdry terms. It is most explicit in this volume. It is also a work about government wrongdoing.A triple murder occurs--with Johannson and Svensson killed as well as Salander's "overseer," maintaining contact with her because of her labeling as "incompetent," Nils Bjurman. Salander's fingerprints are on the weapon used to kill all three, so she becomes the fugitive in a massive hunt for her. The story then hinges on a virtual partnership (by computer) between Blomkvist and Salander. She refuses to see him after what she sees as his betrayal of her--although she also notes that he had behaved decently toward her. But she is willing to help him in his investigation of the murders of Johansson-Svensson and in his effort to vindicate her.There are some amazing scenes here, including the one where she takes on two powerful bikers and leaves them whimpering (you have to read this!). As Palmgren said at one point, if you point a gun at Salander, she'll find a bigger gun.There is a touching moment as she heads off to confront Zala (whose relationship with her adds an extra dimension of dramatic tension) and a giant blonde, the latter of whom is seemingly immune to pain. Before she begins her quest, Salander wants to tell Blomqvist via e-mail that she had been in love with him, but can't bear admitting. So, she simply says to him (Page 563): "Thanks for being my friend."Then, she moves to confront Zala (no spoiler here, but he is the one whom she threw the Molotov cocktail at when she was 12). Blomkvist, nervous at her last e-mail, thinking she was taking off to confront evil and even perish, tries to follow her. There is a horrific confrontation, with Salander miraculously escaping an extraordinarily perilous situation before getting a degree of revenge. But, she has been badly hurt, Blomqvist gets her airlifted for medical care, and we wait for the third book in the series, wondering what will come next.

In THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, the second volume in the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, publisher Mikael Blomkvist and the police are conducting parallel investigations into three horrifying murders -- and their initial evidence points straight at young computer genius and social misfit Lisbeth Salander. Kalle Bastard Blomkvist (as Salander has begun referring to him) hasn't seen Salander in nearly two years, except for one night when he happened to witness a huge man attempting to kidnap her and both she and the attacker eluded him. He's bewildered about why she cut him off cold, but had accepted her decision -- until now. He doesn't believe Salander killed these victims. Well, at least not two of them. He has to contact her, find out how she's become embroiled in this, and help her. Salander, as usual, has her own ideas about who she'll see and when....In THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Larsson partnered Blomkvist and Salander as they unraveled a twisted tale of corporate greed, Fascist connections, and perverse sex and violence. FIRE highlights another subject on which Larsson wanted to shine light, namely the underbelly of the sex trade, a swill of human misery being forcibly imposed for money and simple loathing of women. Blomkvist's magazine, Millennium, plans an issue devoted to the subject based on the interviews and reporting of a criminologist and a journalist, and there follows much in-house discussion of the lurid material and how it should be presented to the public. But the three murders turn the magazine and its people on their heads.Meanwhile, Salander travels, changes her appearance, and matures in the early chapters of the 569-page book that covers four months in total and is told in four parts. Among her pursuits: attempting to proof Fermat's Last Theorem in a way Fermat himself might have done, furnishing her new abode, and keeping tabs on Bjurman (whom, recall, she memorably tattooed in DRAGON). Then, she disappears for quite a spell as the murder investigation gets cranking, and finally, she regains the spotlight as the book rushes headlong into a heart-stopping denouement.The last book in this series -- tentatively entitled THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST in its English translation -- is not scheduled for release until 2010. However, the entire trilogy has already been published in Swedish (naturally), French, and German. Larsson reportedly had planned a ten-volume series. He had written part of the fourth book and had outlined volumes five, six, and seven. Sadly, due to his early death, only the trilogy is complete and will, according to his father, be published. After reading FIRE, the thought creeps in that perhaps the trilogy will not provide closure, and that the reader could be left dangling, unsatisfied. That would be a crying shame because Salander and Blomkvist -- along with other continuing characters -- do burrow themselves deeply into the reader's (at least this reader's) affections. Fortunately, reviewers who have read, in the other aforementioned languages, the entire story arc, including the final novel, seem generally very satisfied. Some claim that the last book, also the longest, is a grand finale that answers all outstanding questions. A few are less effusive, stating that the last book can't meet the anticipatory heights set by the stunning, unusual first one.This last criticism can be applied to the second book as well. FIRE does not pack quite the punch of uniqueness that DRAGON did. One can perhaps think of the movie trilogy THE MATRIX, MATRIX RELOADED, and THE MATRIX REVOLUTION as an analogy. The smash introductory film awed with its mind-bending perspective. The second and third passes were very solid, even amazing, partners, but they only reiterated the cutting-edge magic so novel in The MATRIX, building on it, not inventing something mind-blowingly fresh. Familiarity takes a bit of the bloom off the rose, but it certainly doesn't breed contempt in these instances. Larsson's FIRE lags a little during the mid-section in which criminal investigation procedure grinds along and the author belabors certain points, seeming to believe his readers novices at crime mysteries. But overall, FIRE accelerates the enthralling story of Lisbeth and Mikael with panache. One can't help thinking the world they inhabit is too slimy, too vicious, but Larsson was a man with many crusades and causes, and his trilogy vividly paints the harsh pictures of society that he hoped to reform. The Millennium Trilogy encompasses uncompromising social critique; prickling thrills; and curious, bittersweet romance. FIRE drew me like a moth, and I can't wait to get my hands on HORNET. 4.4 stars.