Book Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

So there's this guy at work - Ken - and he's one of my favorite people in the building.  He's the absolute sweetest and was (and continues to be) one of the few people around who are interested in mentoring the younger folks.  He's in his late 50s (I think?), happily married to what sounds like a Diva of sorts (in a good way), and of late he's beside himself as his son, who lived in the French Riviera for years, is finally headed home with French wife and kids in tow.  Ken is just an all-around great guy, and he also happens to be very into reading, particularly mystery novels.  Which is another reason why we hit it off- we love getting our lit chat on.  So after tons of book pushing (love it!), I finally gave in to Ken's mystery lobbying and picked up the Larsson trilogy.

For those of you who don't already know (which is hard to believe considering how these books have saturated the book market and pop culture in general), Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist and writer who died at the age of 50 of a massive heart attack.  At his death, Larsson left the manuscripts of three completed but unpublished novels in a series.  They were gradually translated into English, and now we have (1) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which I read pre-blog); (2) The Girl Who Played with Fire; and (3) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. 

I'm convinced that the fact that these books were published posthumously has sensationalized them a bit, because they really aren't spectacular and worth their popularity.  Still, even yours truly craves some pop culture every now and again, and weird, pointless mystery novels feel somehow superior to TV brain drain.  There really isn't much to review here:  these are very plot-heavy reads, with twists and turns at ever chapter's end.  To Larsson's defense, they're usually unpredictable.  So if you're at the beach for the weekend and don't feel like sharpening your late 18th century brit lit repertoire, this series would serve as a juicy interlude.  Best of all, the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, is a woman who "hates men who hate women."  Can I get a witness?!

However, I do think the storylines are a little extreme at points.  Larsson, along with some of his Nordic expats, seem to be (still) completely obsessed with neo-Nazi extremists (to be fair, this was the subject of much of his journalism before he passed).  Let's just say I'll have met my quota of blonde, racist, sexually repressed antagonists after I'm done with the trilogy.  And I'm no homophobe, but the girl on girl love in this book was a little much for me.  It wasn't too graphic, but it did seem like a phony attempt to make Salander even more emotionally complex than she already was.

Oh, and seriously what is with everyone buying gourmet food at the 7-11 in Sweden?

So I'll read on and complete the trilogy for sweet Ken (and for my sanity- I can't just go reading two-thirds of a trilogy y'all).  But I won't be searching for more of Larsson's gems after I've retired these three...

xo