“The Girl Who Played with Fire” by Stieg Larsson

Yay or Nay?

Yay²! (87%)

Consensus: Most find the 2nd installment of Larsson’s Millenium trilogy even better than the first, due mostly to his focus on his mesmerizing heroine.

Genres: Fiction

Description: Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government. … [more]

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24 Book Reviews for “The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson

If “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was amazing, then “The Girl Who Played with Fire” is astonishing, perfect in every conceivable way.

Published in Book Reporter | Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub | Full Review
Larsson manages to create a series of diverting and intricate plotlines that slowly wind together as the book hurtles towards a hugely powerful ending, with Lisbeth portrayed as more the ruthless avenger than helpless victim. Such is the mastery of Larsson’s writing.
Published the 20th day of January, 2009 in The Independent Weekly | Reviewed by Kath Lockett | Full Review
An absorbing, exciting and bloody multi-layered chase…. The urgency of Larsson’s prose prevents boredom in reading a book that would otherwise be regarded as over-long and over-crammed. Somehow, Larsson has managed to write a riveting read.
Published the 31st day of December, 2008 in The Times | Reviewed by Marcel Berlins | Full Review
Ambisexual wild child, survivor of a youth in “care”, hacker of genius, Larsson’s punk princess seizes this second Millennium mystery … by the scruff of its neck.
Published the 31st day of July, 2009 in The Independent | Reviewed by Boyd Tonkin | Full Review
A thriller with liberal tendencies, in which all the baddies are a) male and b) sexist, and all the goodies are socially conscious crusaders…. Within a few pages it won me over. The prose is colourless, the storytelling overly direct – but it just gets more and more exciting as you go along…. Salander is an extraordinary heroine…. Even when Tasering enemies in the testicles, [she] remains surprisingly sympathetic.
Published the 6th day of September, 2009 in The Independent | Reviewed by Brandon Robshaw | Full Review
Larsson’s inability to get to the point is a liability…. Still, Larsson is too good a writer to make things dull. If it isn’t the page-turner that the original was, it at least has enough elements to keep things inching forward…. Let’s hope there’s even more of the “Girl” in the third and final book. Whether the world needs more people like Lisbeth Salander, crime writing sure does.
Published the 1st day of September, 2009 in Boston Globe | Reviewed by Ed Siegel | Full Review
It’s refreshing to read crime fiction that burns with such blue-flame intensity in which every word counts. There is passion here, to be sure, even anger — about violence against women, about the media’s sometimes too cozy relationship with law enforcement — but Larsson never allows “Fire” to boomerang out of control. He keeps a tight rein on the bullet-train plot.
Published the 16th day of August, 2009 in San Antonio Express-News | Reviewed by Steve Bennett | Full Review
Larsson has given his readers the ingredients for a heady literary cocktail. The action is stirring, and my belief in Larsson’s ability is not shaken. Cheers!
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09221/989121-148.stm#ixzz0gZWRLsNR

Published the 9th day of August, 2009 in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | Reviewed by Michael Helfand | Full Review
As with the first book, Larsson weaves a taut, multifaceted, pulse-pounding dark tale that keeps producing surprises to the end.
Published the 7th day of August, 2009 in The Oregonian | Reviewed by Fred Vulin | Full Review
Only a profoundly confident author would dare send Salander to IKEA and rattle off what she bought by product name, confident that readers will follow along.
Published the 30th day of July, 2009 in The Onion A.V. Club | Reviewed by Ellen Wernecke | Full Review
“The Girl Who Played With Fire” is a muscle car. But a European engine purrs beneath its hood.
Published the 27th day of July, 2009 in Los Angeles Times | Reviewed by Daniel Mallory | Full Review
Larsson steadily builds the tension until it’s nearly impossible to put this book down.
Published the 1st day of August, 2009 in Star Tribune | Reviewed by Kathe Connair | Full Review
“Fire” is at its best when exploring [Salander's] dark secrets, and those who found themselves mystified and intrigued by her in the first book will tear through this exploration of her long-shrouded past
Published the 22nd day of July, 2009 in Entertainment Weekly | Reviewed by Rob Brunner | Full Review
His secret weapon is his straightforward, methodical, even expository style, most likely an adaptation from his nonfiction feature writing. It’s the very absence of the usual flashy, fast-paced, movie-inspired tricks that hooks you in…. By conventional rules, this level of detail ought to be tedious, but instead it makes the novel feel reported, as if it were the world’s greatest true-crime narrative.
Published the 2nd day of June, 2009 in Salon | Reviewed by Laura Miller | Full Review
Given the enormous craft shown in the first two books, it’s not stretching it to say that Larsson will be remembered as one of the most revered writers of the early 21st century. He’s blessed with both depth and killer wit…. About a third of the way into the book,… Larsson throws something into the mix that’s fiendishly transfixing. This is the point where you might as well give up on the idea of sleep till you’ve finished the book.
Published the 2nd day of August, 2009 in Dallas Morning News | Reviewed by Joy Tipping | Full Review
The prose works well enough, although it’s hard to know whether it’s the late author or his translator who has a penchant for clunky simile (e.g. “nutty as a fruitcake,” “His eyes burned like fire.”). But, hey. With a top-notch story laced with bizarre secrets and unspeakable acts of violence, who cares?
Published the 2nd day of August, 2009 in St. Petersburg Times | Reviewed by Kit Reed | Full Review
Far better than average at least! And often brilliant in his plotting. The books are so good, in fact, that I have to keep reminding myself that they are genre novels, not mainstream fiction.
Published the 26th day of July, 2009 in San Francisco Chronicle | Reviewed by Alan Cheuse | Full Review
Like Thomas Hardy with his “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” Larsson makes the reader love and worry about his heroine as though she were real. It’s almost unnerving. You want to befriend her.
Published the 28th day of July, 2009 in USA Today | Reviewed by Deirdre Donahue | Full Review
Here is a writer with two skills useful in entertaining readers royally: creating characters who are complex, believable and appealing even when they act against their own best interest; and parceling out information in a consistently enthralling way.
Published the 27th day of July, 2009 in The Washington Post | Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle | Full Review
On the basis of the central character and mystery narrative, the success is justified, although some aficionados of detective fiction will be surprised by the level of detail about what happens in bedrooms and supermarkets.
Published the 10th day of January, 2009 in The Guardian | Reviewed by Mark Lawson | Full Review
This second novel … is even more gripping and astonishing than the first…. What makes it outstanding is the author’s ability to handle dozens of characters and parallel narratives without ever losing tension. Larsson was as vexed by misogyny as any author I’ve come across, but he was also a fantastic storyteller. This novel will leave readers on the edge of their seats.
Published the 11th day of January, 2009 in The Times | Reviewed by Joan Smith | Full Review
His skill is partly in his patience. This is a hefty book, but he constructs his suspenseful plot without ever ramping up the melodrama. Like most crime novels, there are a few implausible coincidences, but Larsson makes us care too much about his characters to hold these flaws against him. “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is that rare thing – a sequel that is even better than the book that went before.
Published the 15th day of February, 2009 in The Guardian | Reviewed by Louise France | Full Review
Though this novel lacks the sexual and romantic tension that helped spark “Dragon Tattoo” … it boasts an intricate, puzzlelike story line that attests to Mr. Larsson’s improved plotting abilities, a story line that simultaneously moves backward into Salander’s traumatic past, even as it accelerates toward its startling and violent conclusion…. Mr. Larsson’s two central characters, Salander and Blomkvist, transcend their genre and insinuate themselves in the reader’s mind through their oddball individuality, their professional competence and, surprisingly, their emotional vulnerability.
Published the 16th day of February, 2009 in The New York Times | Reviewed by Michiko Kakutani | Full Review
If you’re among the legions who devoured The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, you can turn immediately to Page 125…. Not that the first 124 pages of this thriller aren’t fun…. But unless you take a voyeur’s intense interest in which tattoo Salander had removed or how her breast implants turned out, it’s more gratifying when the plot finally kicks in. For all the complications of the melodramatic story, which advances at a brisk, violently cinematic clip,… it’s clear where Larsson’s strongest interests lie — in his heroine and the ill-concealed attitudes she brings out in men.
Published the 13th day of August, 2009 in The New York Times | Reviewed by Marilyn Stasio | Full Review

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