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The Girl Who Played with Fire |  | Author: Stieg Larsson
Creator: Reg Keeland
Publisher: Knopf
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $9.98
as of 11/23/2009 08:40 CST details
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New (59) Used (28) Collectible (8) from $9.49
Seller: cseereader
Rating:  303 reviews
Sales Rank: 36
Format: Deckle Edge
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0307269981
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.738
EAN: 9780307269980
ASIN: 0307269981
Publication Date: July 28, 2009
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, July 2009: The girl with the dragon tattoo is back. Stieg Larsson's seething heroine, Lisbeth Salander, once again finds herself paired with journalist Mikael Blomkvist on the trail of a sinister criminal enterprise. Only this time, Lisbeth must return to the darkness of her own past (more specifically, an event coldly known as "All the Evil") if she is to stay one step ahead--and alive. The Girl Who Played with Fire is a break-out-in-a-cold-sweat thriller that crackles with stunning twists and dismisses any talk of a sophomore slump. Fans of Larsson's prior work will find even more to love here, and readers who do not find their hearts racing within the first five pages may want to confirm they still have a pulse. Expect healthy doses of murder, betrayal, and deceit, as well as enough espresso drinks to fuel downtown Seattle for months. --Dave Callanan
Product Description
Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government.
But he has no idea just how explosive the story will be until, on the eve of publication, the two investigating reporters are murdered. And even more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander—the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker who came to his aid in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and who now becomes the focus and fierce heart of The Girl Who Played with Fire.
As Blomkvist, alone in his belief in Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation of the slayings, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 303
 Great read, can't put the book down. November 22, 2009
Larry R (Saratoga NY)
If you read the first in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this book is even better. If you haven't read the first, please do so. The third is coming out in May, and for the first time I will pre-order a book. I'm not much of a reader, but this series is great and impossible to put down.
 A Wonderful Feminist Book! November 22, 2009
Derek Manchette (The South, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Let me get straight to the point. It is unlikely many readers will pick this up without having read THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, the first book in this trilogy by Stieg Larsson. (If you are one such person, put this book down and pick up TGWTDT first.) How does this book compare to its predecessor?
Not very well, I am afraid.
The bare plot involving a triple murder, an illegal sex ring and main character Lisbeth Salander's mysteriously alluded to background, could have been woven into an intriguing thriller. But it is almost impenetrably bogged down with so many unnecessary characters that the plot gets buried underneath the act of simply trying to keep one's scorecard straight.
Alas, that is not the locus of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE's main troubles. More problematic is that I have never read a book more filled with clear contempt, hostility and antipathy towards men in my life. It is so over the top as to be almost beyond description.
Oh, but did I not mention an illegal sex trade above? What was the author to do? Make them look like Boy Scouts? But the problem is far more widespread than this. Even male characters that have nothing to do with the sex trade are just scumbags to the core. Certain male characters are introduced, it would seem, for no other purpose than to portray men poorly. It would be difficult to overstate the extremity of this literary drive-by.
Indeed, with the exception of Mikael Blomkvist, almost every male character is not merely defective, but extremely so. Typical for this mentality, when a female character hates men, it is always due to some external reason that portrays them sympathetically, such as past abuse by a man. But when male characters hate women, it is because . . . well, just because. It is ontological in nature (see, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture for a good analysis of this phenomenon in pop culture).
Even more telling of the author's contempt for other men can be seen in his portrayal of those few men who might actually be referred to as the 'good guys.' All are either laughably ineffective and, in a literary version of a feminist wish fulfillment, need women to physically protect them (in a particularly illuminating example, a world class boxer is saved from getting beaten to death in a physical fight by a woman with broken ribs, a broken nose and other serious bodily harm, who is able to knock the big, bad man out to save the good guy's life) or instead are merely pathetic (Erika Berger's husband, who jovially wishes his wife a good time when she explicitly tells him, as she often does, that she will not be coming home that night and instead will be sharing the bed of another man).
Not surprisingly for anyone familiar with the mindset of those males `enlightened' about the oppression of women, the book is filled with women kicking the groins of, shooting, and generally committing other acts of violence against men. But hey? The men are all scumbags, aren't they? They deserve it.
Independent of the above, this book is weak for another reason. Larsson has made Lisbeth Salander simply too ridiculous to take seriously. In the first book, Larsson gave Salander a photographic memory, a trait that makes her truly an act of fiction given that this does not exist in non-mentally handicapped adults. Here, we learn of Salander's other intellectual gifts, ones that are so preposterous that I have no choice but to use the word `ridiculous' once again, in order to describe them properly.
Stieg Larsson, like every male feminist I have ever encountered (and I know he explicitly considered himself to be one), no doubt thought of himself as enlightened. And, again like every male feminist I have encountered, believed it his role to enlighten the rest of us, especially us other men. In fact, Larsson does nothing to illuminate any issues about violence against women, but does a wonderful job instead of illuminating the degree to which some men have serious problems with their own masculinity. His attempt to bludgeon us with an ideological agenda has turned what could have been a very good book into a hunk of junk.
..even better than the first novel November 20, 2009
Grace (Texas)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This second novel in the trilogy is even better than "Dragon Tattoo". Heroine Salander fights to stay alive and out of Jail, as the secrets of her past are slowly peeled away like an onion. One surprise after another had me hooked to the last page.
 More mainstream November 19, 2009
Gregory Baird (Morristown, NJ)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Needless to say, if you are a fan of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage), the first novel in Stieg Larsson's series, you will be sure to enjoy the second installment as well. My one caveat for you is that this one is much more of a straight genre mystery/thriller, which may turn some off. Dragon Tattoo was a highly complex story with multiple plots and layers of intrigue going on, and the fact that Larsson balanced these plots so deftly made it something of an achievement in the end. Fire adheres much more to formula -- there's a murder, Lisbeth Salander is implicated and goes on the lam, and it is up to Mikael Blomkvist -- the only man who believes in Salander's innocence -- to clear her name and catch the real culprit. There are scattered subplots, but nothing nearly as intricate or as layered as the previous installment.
There are aspects of Fire that go a little off the rails, however. The first hundred pages are a waste of time, since they have nothing to do with the plot and do nothing at all to set up the action. Larsson seems to be using them to establish Salander as a renegade who operates on her own terms, with her own complicated set of morals that she follows. The problem is that anyone who has read Dragon Tattoo (and I'm guessing that pretty much anyone picking up this novel will have done just that) already knows this, so what we have is a hundred pages of filler.
The other, bigger problem with Fire is that there is a gaping contrivance at the novel's center -- a plot hole that Larsson can do nothing to fix. You see, Lisbeth Salander knows the identity of the bad guy, the motive, etc. from the outset of the novel. There isn't actually any mystery. The only reason we have a plot is that she separates herself from Blomkvist and steadfastly refuses to give him any of her information -- even after he regains her trust. Why? No reason. It's just that we wouldn't have a novel if Blomkvist didn't have to piece things together for himself. And wouldn't that be a shame?
In the end, Fire is an enjoyable enough read, but it must be taken as typical genre fluff instead of the smart genre-buster that Dragon Tattoo was.
Grade: C
This is a GREAT book! November 18, 2009
Barbara Hyatt (Reno, NV USA)
I liked the first book (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), but this one was so much better. I can't wait for the last one to come out.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 303
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