The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second in a trilogy of books by Stieg Larsson. Unfortunately he died shortly after delivering the manuscripts, so there will only ever be three books, despite his plan to publish 10 or more.

The NY Times recently published a very interesting article about the author, "The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson" which details the fight between his family and his common law wife over the rights to his book. It is actually quite sad, it turns out that Sweden does not recognize common law marriage, despite the fact that no one there gets married, so his "wife" has no legal rights over the published books or an unfinished manuscript. There are also some juicy conspiracy theories that the wife actually wrote or rewrote large parts of the book, because many people just don't believe Larsson was a good enough writer to put this trilogy together.

Here is where I think we confuse good writing with huge book sales. Neither this book nor the first in the trilogy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is a work of great fiction. They are page turners, they have a captivating plot and interesting characters, but they don't belong on the shelf with Carver and Elmore. They are a great summer read, that probably would never have gotten any noteriety if the author had lived. In fact it took for ever to get them out of Sweden.

So make sure you read Dragon Tattoo before you jump in here, it'll be more rewarding if you know the back story and a few of the characters. That said, there are plenty of new and interesting characters in Fire. Lisbeth Salander, our heroin from the first novel, is implicated in a triple murder and while there was little doubt in my mind that she ever did it, it was a hell of a lot fun finding out who did.