The Girl Who Played With Fire–Stieg Larsson

Book: The Girl Who Played with Fire
Author: Stieg Larsson
Publisher: Vintage Crime
630 pages (Trade Paperback)
My Rating:



Lisbeth Salander has vanished into thin air leaving Mikael Blomkvist wondering what happened in The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second installment of The Millennium Trilogy. Blomkvist has returned to his position at Millennium and is working on a new story involving human trafficking with researchers Dag Svensson and Mia Johanssen. The sex trade is an insidious but thriving business in Sweden and the researchers are about to blow it wide open and name key players in the trade. When Svensson and Johanssen are found murdered, Lisbeth Salander is the prime suspect. Not believing that Lisbeth would commit murder, Blomkvist decides to investigate what happened to his friends and try to clear Lisbeth’s name.

It’s been quite awhile since I picked up the Millennium Trilogy partially because I have sort of been waiting for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest to come out in trade paperback so my set will be complete (yes, I am one of those people that doesn’t like mismatched books). I broke down because several people I knew were reading The Girl Who Played with Fire and I thought it would be fun to talk with them about it. It turned out to be a good book for discussion as we talked about Mikael and Lisbeth as characters as well as some of the supporting characters in the book. There is definitely a need to suspend disbelief in this book just as there was in the first book. One of the main issues people have had with books that I’ve spoken to don’t believe that Lisbeth has Asperger’s Syndrome. I think The Girl Who Played with Fire explores Lisbeth’s behavior much more and makes her less of an enigma than she was in the first book.

The sex trafficking was also a really interesting topic for Larsson to write about since it is such a taboo subject but is so pervasive in society. While it was written in a fictional/thriller style, I think it did bring light to a very serious topic that needs to receive more attention. The book reminded me a little of certain scenes from the movie Taken starring Liam Neeson. I also like how he wove the story together to bring Lisbeth and Mikael onto the investigation together despite Lisbeth being pursued by the authorities. The book also kept with the theme of “men hating women” which makes the books fit together like a puzzle and continually sheds new light on Lisbeth.

I should also note that Lisbeth’s guardian, Bjurman, makes an appearance in The Girl Who Played with Fire. I was hoping that Larsson wouldn’t let that story go by the wayside since it was one of the most memorable storylines in the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A mild spoiler alert here: I thought the storyline between Lisbeth and Bjurman came to a really satisfying conclusion in this book.

The only problem I had with the book was the end. One of the final scenes left me scratching my head. For the sake of not spoiling the book for those of you that haven’t read it, I will withhold the specifics, but I will say that I found the end really unbelievable and had to really suspend disbelief to not completely groan at the end. Even with this part, I really enjoyed the book overall and definitely recommend it to those of you that enjoy thrillers.

After I read this book, I watched the Swedish film of the same name. While I didn’t like it quite as much as the first film, it was still really well done. Mikael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace are amazing actors, and I still can’t quite wrap my finger around the idea of an American film. For one, the books are SO Swedish that I really enjoy listening to the Swedish language in the film even if I can’t understand more than a few words of Swedish! I also think the actors embodied the characters so well in the film that there was no need to make a new version of the film. Yes, it does give Sweden more publicity which I am happy about because for the few days I visited Stockholm some years ago, I fell in love with the city. I would love to go back someday and see more of Sweden. Hopefully a blockbuster American film will show people that Sweden has some excellent writers and amazing culture and beauty. Other than that, I recommend that people see the Swedish version of the film. It’s good to branch out and see how other countries make their films. They usually have such different flavor that I tend to really enjoy them. The major complaint I have about the film in general is that while the book tied Mikael and Lisbeth together quite well, it definitely worked better on paper than it did in the movie. There was a disconnect between Lisbeth and Mikael because they had almost no scenes together in the entire film—the book ties  them together through written word much more effectively than a film ever could. Other than that, it was really well done and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I highly recommend The Girl Who Played with Fire as a great read and a good movie.

1 / 5 books. 20% done!
This is my first book for Zee’s Nordic Challenge


**I am a Book Depository and IndieBound afilliate so If you purchase any of the books I have featured through the links I posted or from the banners in my left hand sidebar, I get a small commission from them. I am in no way compensated for the reviews I post of my books.

Contest–Matthew Reilly

Book: Contest
Author: Matthew Reilly
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia/St. Martin’s Press
418 pages (Paperback)
My Rating:



Dr. Stephen Swain is a radiologist in New York City. He has had some exciting moments in the hospital he works in, but nothing could prepare him for what is about to happen. He is thrust into a gladiator style competition in the labyrinth of the New York City Public Library with no way to get out. His competitors are beings from other planets. They are tough, mean, and are willing to do whatever it takes to be the victor in the competition. To complicate matters, Swain’s daughter Holly has been transported into the library with him so he has to fight for his daughter’s life as well as his own.

I am so thankful for this book and to the friend who loaned it to me. Let me start out by saying that I am needing some fast and fun reads now because I’ve been kind of bogged down with things for awhile. Contest is exactly what I needed. I read this book largely in two sittings because it is pretty exciting. I felt like I was watching a movie like Die Hard the entire time I was reading it. It was pure action from beginning to end. Was there a lot of character development? Not really because the characters were too busy trying to survive the tournament. I have never read a book like this before, and I’m really glad that I picked it up because not only did I expand world in terms of what I’ve read, but I quite enjoyed the experience.

There were moments in the book that I had issues with and was like, “Well that’s not realistic,” but then I realized that the entire book wasn’t realistic because it’s a sci-fi thriller! So, disbelief suspended, I blew through this book and was holding my breath through quite a few parts of it. The aliens were pretty fantastic and in my mind, fairly original. I wasn’t even bothered by the lack of character development because the book was just so much fun to read. There was no time to care about Stephen Swain’s life outside of the library because his experience was so intense that I really didn’t even have time to think about anything else.

Swain’s guide in the library, Selexin, was a really good character as was Swain’s daughter Holly. There was a good balance of her being a child who was afraid of her situation and a survival instinct that was pretty neat for a kid. She reminded me a little of Tim Murphy (the little boy) in Jurassic Park. He was a go for it kid and Holly was for the most part as well. The guide Selexin was supposed to be a passive observer but after observing Swain’s behavior, he became more than that to the group. He put himself in the line of danger to help Swain and Holly and showed himself to be a man-alien of integrity. The characters (even the bad guys) were infinitely likeable in this book. The entire time I was rooting for them to win even if some of their situations seemed a little too easy for them to get out of.

There were a few weak points in the book like I said above.  Some of the moments where I said, “That’s not realistic,” kept me from giving it four to four and a half stars. There were several situations that were a little bit too easy for the characters to get out of, but those same parts made me reluctant to give Contest four stars. Still, this was a great effort for a first novel by Matthew Reilly. I highly recommend it if you are in a reading funk and looking for an action-packed book that is a quick read. I will definitely be reading more Matthew Reilly in the future.



**I am a Book Depository and IndieBound afilliate so If you purchase any of the books I have featured through the links I posted or from the banners in my left hand sidebar, I get a small commission from them. I am in no way compensated for the reviews I post of my books.

The Cold Spot - Tom Piccirilli

My first book for the Thriller and Suspense Challenge was The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli. The story is about a man named Chase who was raised to be a getaway driver in a crew run by his grandfather after his mother and father both die in separate incidents. After a witnessing a member of the crew's murder, Chase decides to go his own way and moves to the South to start a new life that doesn't involve criminal activity. While there, he meets and marries a police officer. Eventually they move back to the Northeast where they begin their life anew until tragedy strikes and Chase once again has to decide whether or not to take up a life of crime.

I have to say that this book was a REALLY quick read for me. It was not very long and read really fast. I finished it in a few hours. The story is pretty engrossing although I found the characters to be a little less than compelling for the first 100 pages or so (there are only 303 pages in the book). I don't think I ever truly connected to the characters even though the story had some pretty exciting moments. Still, I am going to pick up The Coldest Mile which is the sequel to The Cold Spot because it was a nice little weekend read. If you are looking for a crime thriller that is not overly complicated and helps you escape from your boring day at the office, this book will give you a few hours of enjoyable entertainment.

City of Shadows - Ariana Franklin

Time has really gotten away from this last week. With Christmas and the New Year coming up, I got busy and didn't have time to write my last reviews of the year! So, here I am on New Year's Eve writing the last two reviews of 2009. How exciting!

I picked up City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin on a whim at the library a few weeks ago. I was sucked in by the look of the spine on the shelves and when I saw what it was about, I decided to check it out. The story is set in post-WWI Germany where Hitler has begun to gain popularity. Many Russians have fled the Bolsheviks in their country and have taken up residence in Berlin. The main character, Esther, is a Russian Jew and has fled the country after a pogrom. She is beautiful except for a large scar that she has on her face. She also is multilingual and uses her skills to work as a translator for a shady businessman. While she is at work one night, an intruder comes in and tries to attack her and a young woman that Esther's boss thinks is the missing Princess Anastasia. The man gets away, but a string of murders continues in Berlin and threatens Esther, the troubled young woman that might be the princess, and others that Esther knows and cares for.

The first few pages of the book were really interesting and sucked me into the story. However, there was a lull for a good 50-70 pages that made it a little difficult to sit and read for an extended period of time. Once the story got going though, I didn't want to stop reading. It had everything I like...mystery, thrills, and a little historical information on the Romanovs. I did enjoy the book and found it fairly engrossing. If you do read this, keep in mind that she wrote the book when Anastasia was still technically missing. I did a bit of reading on Wikipedia and it said that the missing bodies of the Romanov children were found and identities confirmed in 2007. Ariana Franklin wrote this book in 2006 so some of the information may be somewhat amiss because of it. It was still a fun read and the Romanovs are still as interesting as they ever were.

In the Woods - Tana French

In small town Knocknaree, Ireland, a young girl has been found dead in the woods. She has carefully been placed on an old, stone altar. Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox get assigned to investigate the case. Some years before, two young children disappeared from these same woods. Are the cases related? 

Tana French's debut novel is brilliant. The book took me in so many different directions that I was never sure who was the murderer. Detective Rob Ryan has a link to the older disappearances--he was the third child that was in the woods that day and was found standing in blood soaked shoes. The mystery deepens because he cannot remember what happened in the woods that day. His past haunts him as he struggles to remember. 


I have read a few thrillers this year and this was definitely one of the better ones. There were so many suspects and the crime scene was only half found so I never knew what was going to happen next in the book. I found myself reading at night with my Mighty Bright light in bed and I'd look up and see the clock beaming 4:00 am. While I don't like the insomnia that it's caused, I love books that engage me so much I am unaware of time passing. 


I never like to give away too much when I read thrillers or mysteries because I don't want to ruin the story. I will say that this book kept me guessing and was really well written. If you are looking for a book with a complicated plot that isn't scary, you should give this book a try. I will definitely be picking up the followup, The Likeness for my Thriller and Suspense Challenge in 2010. 

One for the Money - Janet Evanovich

My first meeting with the Thrill Me Book Club was a lot fun, and I mistakenly thought that the next book meeting was going to be early this month so I picked up the next book which is One for the Money by Janet Evanovich. The story is about unemployed Stephanie Plum  who becomes a bounty hunter for a family member who is a bail bondsman. She is desperately in need of money so she takes the case worth the most money which is also the most dangerous.

Stephanie Plum sets out to find a bail jumper that is accused of murdering an unarmed man. The man is a childhood acquaintance with whom she has a colored past. Her pursuit of him is humorous as well as harrowing as she tries to learn the business of bounty hunting. Plum finds out that the straightforward murder case is really more complicated than she once thought. Is the man she hunts really innocent?

The leader of the book club said she likes books that are fun and light reads. One for the Money is definitely just that. I would recommend it as a beach or quick weekend read. It is fun, easy, and Stephanie Plum is an extremely likeable character. If you like thrills with laughs, One for the Money is the book for you.

Night Sins - Tami Hoag

I've been living in Austin for ten years now. In all that time, I realized that I haven't made much of an effort to make new friends. I know, I know. I shouldn't be admitting that I'm a shut in, but hey, I have a blog about books so it shouldn't be a huge surprise that I'm not the life of the party! As part of my effort to branch out what I read, I decided to join a book club that I found on Meetup.com. Tami Hoag's book, Night Sins, was the first book I've read for the book club and we met on Wednesday night to discuss it.

The book is about a young boy who disappears from outside a hockey rink while waiting for his mom to pick him up. A manhunt to find the kidnapper ensues in the small Minnesota town of Deer Lake. A new agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has just started her new job (and is the first female to be a field agent in the state of Minnesota) and she feels the need to prove herself as a good police officer. The chief of police is a man who has experienced losing his own son and wife in a reckless robbery by a drug addict. The two officers work tirelessly to figure out the clues the kidnapper continues to leave them. The parents of the little boy also have their own troubled marriage that threatens to break under the pressure of losing their son.

Overall, the story is pretty formulaic which I am starting to admit is very typical in the thriller novels I have read. Still, some are better than others, and this was one of them. I did enjoy the story and the writing even if there were some things that I didn't like. There was an inevitable romance in the book which I felt could have been left out. Others in the book club really liked that portion of the book though, so if this book sounds like it might interest you, don't let that stop you from reading it.

There is a sequel to the book called Guilty as Sin so keep that in mind when reading Night Sins. I had no idea there was a sequel and was a little unsatisfied with the ending. Needless to say, one of the members of the book club gave me the book because I did want to read it!

Are there any thriller authors any of you can recommend to me? I am completely open to reading new things lately so let me know!

Deja Dead - Kathy Reichs

A couple of my friends are huge fans of the Fox series, Bones. I have never watched it, but I did put it in my Netflix queue since I have been hearing so many good things about it. While it waits patiently in my queue, I picked up the first book of the Tempe Brennan books upon which Bones is loosely based.

Deja Dead is a pretty fast read, but not ridiculously so. I will say that I was able to put the book down when I wanted to and didn't necessarily ache to know what was going to happen next...that is, until about 2/3 of the way through the book. Once the story picked up, I stayed up pretty late at night reading it. I also got a little scared at one point in the book (I scare easily though).

Tempe Brennan is a Forensic Anthropologist that works with the police in Montreal. I was a little skeptical as to how a forensic anthropologist would put herself in danger and inevitably be chased by a killer, but Reichs somehow managed to do just those things. While investigating a series of brutal murders, Tempe gets caught up in a serial killer's web. Because she is working on the case and is closer than any of the police to solving the crime, the serial killer begins to stalk her. While her choices aren't necessarily any I would make (like investigating a possible murder site at night....in the rain), it made for a thrilling read where danger was felt around every corner.

I felt a little annoyed at Tempe's wild abandon at chasing the serial killer in the book even though she has no real law enforcement experience outside of examining bones and tissue in the lab and at murder sites. I used to work in a lab, and there is no part of me that would pick up a scalpel and start operating on patients just because I worked with doctors. Well, Tempe Brennan is not like me. She is law enforcement all the way. After reading this book, I recommend that she go to the police academy and get her sidearm and just become police! She would certainly be a lot safer.

Even though I was annoyed with her choices, I will keep reading the series. It was engaging and fun enough that I want to try reading a few more of Kathy Reichs' books.  I will say that I think this is a better library book checkout or used bookstore purchase than getting it new. It was Reichs' first novel so I am confident that the books will improve over time.

I am enjoying reading thrillers/mysteries. If you have any suggestions of books or authors I should read, please leave a comment and let me know what your favorites are!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

For months, I heard about the hype surrounding Stieg Larsson's novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Thrillers/mysteries are a genre that I am trying to get into this year. I always enjoy them, but I also find most of them forgettable and within a few months of reading them I can rarely remember what the plot of the book was. I can safely say that this book will not be one of them. The plot was incredible and left me guessing through much of the book. There was such a detailed back story that I became attached to some of the characters as well.

The book is about a disgraced financial journalist named Mikael Blomkvist who has been convicted of libel for a story he published about a Swedish businessman. Through the press coverage of the trial, industrialist Henrik Vanger finds Blomkvist and hires him to write his family's story and hopefully solve the mysterious disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger. Blomkvist does exhaustive research into the Vanger family over the course of a year and even picks up a research assistant along the way. The twists and turns the story takes made for a really good read. I was never bored! However, this book was chosen for an online book club that I am participating in, and one of the readers found the book laborious and difficult to follow. It is true that there are a ridiculous number of Vangers in the book (since Blomkvist is researching the family history, he pretty much touches on every one for the last 100 years it seems like) and the back story takes quite awhile to get through. My copy was almost 600 pages and the exciting part starts around pages 200-250. I didn't find any of it boring. During the back story, Lisbeth Salander (who is the girl with the dragon tattoo) has her own story that I felt was equally interesting if not more at times.

I cannot wait to pick up a copy of The Girl Who Played with Fire and continue reading the series. I will most likely wait until it comes out in paperback just to keep my series consistent (my copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is paperback). My only regret in this series is the Stieg Larsson died in 2004 at the age of 50. According to Wikipedia, his plans were to write ten books in the Millenium series, but only three were finished and a fourth manuscript was left unfinished. Synopses were written for the fifth and sixth books of the series. I would have enjoyed reading all of the novels, and I'm excited that there are three that are or will be available soon.