Crackerjack suspense, interesting characters and good writing, a rare and welcome commodity in this genre. I am eagerly awaiting the last book in the series. Anyone heading over the Pond? ( )

This book was frankly really disappointing. After a strong start in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the series seems to have taken a turn towards bored, fairly contrived plotlines. There was very little mystery or suspense in this book, and much of it was spent watching uninteresting characters puttering around trying to "solve" a crime by arguing with one another about whether Salander is a "good person." Blomkvist in particular is a fairly illogical character in this book, basically putting his entire life on hold in order to follow through on his conviction that a strange girl who he knew for a couple months (who then disappeared and stopped talking to him for over a year), must be innocent. Futhermore, the stories of many of the minor characters in the book, including Miriam, Paulo, Berger, Bublanski, etc. were all kind of random, uninteresting, and didn't have almost anything to do with the story.

I appreciate setting the stage, but somehow that is all this book was - it lost the mystery, thrill, and intrigue of the previous novel. ( )

In this fast-paced, explosive book, the second in the trilogy, we finally get to know Lisbeth Salander. The book's first part has The Girl touring Europe and the Caribbean—relaxing, spending her newfound fortune, and trying to forget the only man she’s ever loved, Mikael Blomkvist, hotshot journalist and part owner of Millennium magazine. It’s not until she returns home to Sweden that things turn ugly. While Salander was gone, Mikael and his team at the office had been working with a writer on a tell-all book about an illegal sex trafficking ring that would expose well-known men in the police department and government as “johns.” However, before the book can be published, three people connected to it are savagely murdered. On her return, Salander unknowingly sets herself up to be the object of the most extensive manhunt in Sweden. She easily evades detectives but is forced to get involved when her friend, Miriam Wu, is severely beaten. Using her considerable skills, she tries to get to the bottom of the murders until she realizes her past is at the core, and things quickly spiral into a fight for survival. The Girl Who Played with Fire had big shoes to fill after the first novel—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—made such a big splash. I would say this second book grabs you differently. It may not be as electrifying as the first, but it fulfilled my need to understand this complicated, mysterious, iconic character, Lisbeth Salander. ( )

Fucking weird-ass book. In two more years, I'll probably find myself reading the third one.

I wanted to beat my head against the wall every time Larsson said something stupid/ridiculous/inane about Fermat's Last Theorem.

Better than first book. This told the story of Lisbeth and gives the reader a better understanding of her psychic.