The Girl Who Played With Fire

by Stieg Larsson

Reviewed by Coral

Mikael Blomkvist’s Millennium newspaper has decided to run an exposé on the sex trade and human trafficking into Sweden. Their plans are to publish an issue that exposes police and other high ranking officials who have slept with underage girls forced into prostitution.

When the two main authors of the article are murdered right before the story goes to press, the Millennium staff is determined to find out who killed their colleagues. But when the police reveal that the finger prints they’ve recovered from the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander, Mikael finds himself drawn into a conspiracy that has spanned Lisbeth’s lifetime.

While Lisbeth comes face to face with her past, Mikael risks his life to repay the debt he owes to her and prove her innocence.

I liked this book for the most part though it was a dark and depressing read.

I’m not sure if the author wanted us to suspect Lisbeth for a time, but there was a stretch of chapters where we weren’t getting anything from her point of view that went on a little too long for me.

There are a lot of unpleasant secondary characters in the book and it was frustrating that at least one of them makes it to the end of the story without being punished for his inappropriate actions.

Grade: B