The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire

Author	Stieg Larsson
Original title	Flickan som lekte med elden
Translator	Reg Keeland, pseudonym of Steven T. Murray
Language	Swedish
Series	Millennium Trilogy
Genre	Crime / Mystery novel
Publisher	Norstedts Förlag (Swedish), Quercus (English)
Publication date	2006 (Sweden), 2009 (United Kingdom)
Publication place	Sweden
Media type	Print (Paperback & Hardback)
Pages	631
Preceded by	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Followed by	The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

The Girl Who Played with Fire (original title in Swedish: "Flickan som lekte med elden") is the second novel in the million-selling Millennium Trilogy by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. It was published posthumously in Swedish in 2006 and in English in January 2009.

The book features many of the characters that appeared in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, among them Lisbeth Salander, the 'Girl' of the title and a social misfit hacker extraordinaire, and Mikael Blomkvist, the crusading journalist and publisher of Millennium magazine.

Widely seen as a critical success, The Girl Who Played with Fire was also (according to The Bookseller magazine) the first and only translated novel to be number one in the UK hardback chart.

Plot summary

Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of Millennium magazine, has made his living exposing the crooked and corrupt practices of establishment Swedish figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with a meticulously researched thesis about sex trafficking in Sweden and those in high office who abuse underage girls, Blomkvist immediately throws himself into the investigation.

He’s had no contact with tattoed wild-child and computer hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander since they risked their lives on a terrifying hunt for a serial killer last year (see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). But unknown to Blomkvist, Salander has had contact with him – or at least, with his computer hard drive, which she has cloned and is monitoring from the vast new apartment she has bought with her fraudulently obtained fortune.

Multiply abused while young, Salander is a traumatized survivor of the care system in Sweden – but she’s no helpless victim. A punk avenging angel with kick-boxing skills, a photographic memory and pathologically focussed on seeking out and punishing violent misogynists, Salander is drawn to the investigation on Blomkvist’s computer. So while Blomkvist and his fellow Millennium idealists research the sex industry according to the rules of good journalism, Salander – spurred on by the appalling case studies of teenage prostitution she finds on Blomkvists computer – takes matters into her own hands. She plots punishment for the traffickers, but before she can carry out her own brand of justice, she is accused of three murders, all connected to the sex trafficking expose about to be published in Millennium.

To avoid capture by the police, Salander vanishes. While the tabloids go wild at the idea of a “psychotic lesbian” on the run, Blomkvist tries despairingly to clear her name, though he can’t find her anywhere. When he does eventually make contact, it is to discover that Salander is more embroiled in his investigation than he could have thought possible. It turns out that for Salander, the trail of guilt leads shockingly close to home.

Characters

• Mikael Blomkvist, journalist and publisher for Millennium magazine, also a minor celebrity after his role a year ago in exposing corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerstrom
• Dag Svensson, a bright young journalist who approached Millennium with his research into sex trafficking
• Mia Johansson, Dag’s girlfriend, writing a thesis on sex trafficking for her doctorate
• Lisbeth Salander, tattooed, bisexual computer-hacker with violent tendencies and a pathological hatred of men who exploit women
• Miriam Wu (Mimmi), a fetish-fancying performance artist and Lisbeth’s sometime-girlfriend
• Nils Bjurman, corrupt lawyer and Lisbeth’s abusive guardian
• Alexander Zalachenko (Zala), an elusive figure of the sex trafficking industry whose name alone strikes fear in people’s hearts
• Inspector Bublanski, of the Stockholm Police force, is leading the hunt for ‘triple murderer’ Lisbeth Salander

Major themes

Although all Larsson’s books are thrillers in terms of their plot, they are also critiques of Swedish society in terms of their content. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Larsson focused on the moral bankruptcy of big business and the superiority complexes of misogynistic men. He also posed questions about how responsible a criminal is for his crimes, and how acceptable it is to take the law into ones own hands in the name of justice.

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, misogynistic men and the women they exploit come under the microscope once again. This time, however, the men are not acting on their own but are part of the network of like-minded men that forms the sex industry. These men are portrayed as violent, perverted, corrupt, and protected by high-ranking officials in Swedish society – so Larsson is posing questions about the abuse of power. He shows how easy it is for those in high places to cover up their misdeeds, and also how dismissive the government is of the victims of sex trafficking: usually underage illegal immigrants with no voting power, they are so far down society’s ladder that they are of no interest to the legal system.

He continues the debate from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo of how responsible a criminal is for his or her crimes and how much is blamed on upbringing or society. He reveals Salander’s appalling past, spent in criminally corrupt institutions at the hands of abusive men. She herself is incorruptible. She unbendingly obeys her own strict codes of morality, justice, and revenge – all of which are very different from those employed by the High Court.

In Salander’s words “there are no innocents … only different degrees of responsibility.

Reception

The English version was published in January 2009 and immediately became a number 1 bestseller . It received reviews from most of the major UK newspapers. Many reviewers agreed with Joan Smith at the Sunday Times that this novel was “even more gripping and astonishing than the first”. Carla McKay at the Daily Mail said that, like its predecessor, the book is "not just a thrilling read, but tackles head-on the kind of issues that Larsson himself railed against in society". Most of the reviewers concentrated mainly on the character of Lisbeth Salander, with Mark Lawson at the Guardian saying that "the huge pleasure of these books is Salander, a fascinating creation with a complete and complex psychology" and Boyd Tonkin in the The Independent saying that "the spiky and sassy Lisbeth Salander – punkish wild child, traumatised survivor of the "care" system, sexual adventurer and computer hacker of genius" was "the most original heroine to emerge in crime fiction for many years". One reviewer was not convinced. Paul Connolly at the London Lite complained that Larsson's second book was "far too long and the tub-thumping far too loud", and that it was "less gripping" than the first book in the series.

Trivia

For non-Swedish readers of the book, it might be interesting to know that the character of Paolo Roberto is not a fictional character. He is an ex-boxer and TV-chef who also dabbled in politics. He is featured in some very important chapters and will play himself in the film based on the book.

External links

• Website for Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire (en)

See also

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Millennium Trilogy Wiki