The Girl Who Played with Fire – Millenium Trilogy – Part 2

This’s another thrilling read. I would say it’s more astonishing than the first part. Many of the characters from the first part The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo appear in this book, Journalist Mikael Blomkvist and private investigator Lisbeth Salander being the lead ones.

After solving the mystery of Harriet Vanger’s disappearance (in the first part), Lisbeth stays away from Mikael Blomkvist for reasons unknown to him. She spends a holiday abroad and returns to Sweden. Purchases an apartment, changes her indentity, address and starts a new life.

Mikael, approached by his colleague with a thesis on sex trafficking in Sweden, plans to run the story in the upcoming issue of Millenium. Shortly before the printing, he discovers his colleagues murdered in their apartment in Stockholm. The next day Lisbeth’s guardian Nils Bjurman is also found dead in his house. Lisbeth turns out to be the primary suspect in these three murders.

Mikael believes that Lisbeth is innocent and he wants to prove the same. How he gets into contact with her and how the mystery behind the murders is solved forms the rest of the story. The connection between Lisbeth and the people responsible for these illegal activities (Sex trafficking) is the main point around which the story revolves.

The author handled a number of characters with parallel narratives in an outstanding manner without losing the tension. The only one point where I was confused is that I couldn’t make any sense why he quoted mathematical equations before each part of the novel. Lisbeth is exploring the book Dimensions of Mathematics in the first part of the novel. Still, I couldn’t make a connection.
Second entry to Readers guild reading marathon.