The first novel in Mr. Larsson's Millennium trilogy thundered onto the literary scene with its antihero protagonists and its atypically graceful mystery. And so it would come as no surprise to me if this second installment sold as well as the first, as fans hungry for more Blomkvist and Salander divest bookstores the world over of their many copies. I would be equally willing to wager, however, that fan enjoyment of The Girl Who Played With Fire was far below that of its progenitor because this is, in every way, an inferior book.
Flush with the successful solving of the Vanger cold case, Mikael Blomkvist and his magazine have justifiably earned reputations for their willingness to take on the most controversial of subjects. And so there's no hesitation from Blomkvist when he's approached to run a story about sex trafficking in Sweden. But when the two journalists who researched the explosive piece turn up dead, around the same time the body of Lisbet Salander's abusive guardian is discovered by Swedish authorities, Blomkvist is forced to ask uncomfortable questions about Salander, his one-time partner who has since disappeared without a trace. The police finger Salander for all three killings, a reality which obligates Blomkvist to exonerate Salander while he pursues the real murderer of his two colleagues. All this leads Blomkvist down a dark road, a road straight into Lisbet Salander's torturous past, a past from which few escape.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was not without its salaciousness, but the success of that novel, and indeed the success of Nordic Noir generally, lies in the extent to which the crimes being investigated are, by non-Scandinavian standards, fairly tame. Its strength lies in its innocence, in its absence of splashy gore and irredeemable evil. Here, Mr. Larsson threw all of that away, substituting the cold grace of his first novel with the sadistic sex and the hackneyed "I am your father Luke" tropes which characterize crappy crime fiction. What's more, Mr. Larsson completely fails to sell us on Salander's guilt, a failure compounded by the pain of having to sit through half the book while everyone but Blomkvist blindly gropes towards this obvious conclusion. And then to have these 600 pages culminate in a scene straight out of you can't kill me Hollywood? Not good enough.
The Girl Who Played With Fire needed to be shorter by a good 200 pages, and a lot less cliched, to meet the standard set by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That worthy effort will live on in my memory, but this here has made me doubt if the third installment will deserve even a look. A shame. (2/5 Stars)
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