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An excellent follow up to the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo only to be bettered by the final part of the trilogy.

Sorry to prick the hyperbole bubble, but this is a very ordinary thriller. The first 100 pages drag some (and the writing is as wooden as the IKEA furniture that obesses Larson), the middle 350 then trot along at a fair pace with some engaging plot turns, then the final 100 is a bit of a let-down. After the very engaging first volume, this is a disappointment.

Excellent follow up to The Girl with the Dragon TattooThe Girl Who Played with Fire

Would highly recommend, even better than the first book (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Cannot wait to read the next installment.

The Millenium trilogy starts with a sort of detective story and proceeds in this and the following book (2 and 3 are really the same very long book) more as a thriller. I don't on the whole like thrillers but these were strangely hard to put down. The plot is a bit OTT with extreme violence, high level corruption and spies. Several things that seemed superfluous in book one are brought to the centre in the other two which focus on the story of Lisbeth Salandar.

There has been criticism of Larsson for misogyny mainly over the rather graphic violence towards women. His defence seems to be that he was exposing what happens and how society ignores it and so gives tacit permission. I'm sure his heart was in the right place but there is too much sensationalism in the descriptions. Larsson also hits out at lazy, tabloid journalism in the media firestorm around Salandar.

Then there's the computing: it is very silly and unrealistic but I have read worse (really!). Hackers are romanticised as information warriors and wonders performed on laptops and even Palm PDAs. Another minus is the frequent name-checking of brands which gets rather tedious. I hope Apple paid well as they must have sponsored the books from the number of mentions.

Lisbeth Salandar is a misfit with a photographic memory and a reality defying ability with computers. I rather liked her though. Mikael Blomkvist is a brilliant, attractive, risk-taking journalist (of course) and maybe Larsson's fantasy self. When Salandar is accused of murder and becomes the centre of a tabloid-style media circus, Blomkvist steps in to help his former assitant.