The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire is less spectacular than than the previous entry in the trilogy, yet a rewarding and captivating read. This book is a sequel of sorts to the previous book's allusions to sex trafficking victims, while also unveiling the background of Lisbeth Salander. Structurally, perhaps the novel could have cut the adventures of Salander in Grenada, and maybe trimmed some of the characters and sub-plots at later points. Nonetheless, the novel 'works' while criticizing the Scandinavian welfare state through its shortcomings on trafficking. In the interest of brevity, the novel also exposes additional abuses of the welfare state when it comes to minors, gender-based violence, and treating marginalized individuals as people. Naturally, Larsson achieves this without a preachy protest novel, and along the way hints at the various flaws of the post-Cold War integration of Eastern Europe, Reagan's invasion of Grenada and the increase in human misery in the Caribbean, as well as the relationship between independent media and the police/state. For example, the link between the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Russian mob-violence and sex trafficking is directly tied to the nefarious Swedish government's use of Soviet defectors and Cold War geopolitics. The consequences of these actions reverberate into the neoliberal post-Soviet order. As you can probably guess, Blomkvist, per usual, proves to be sharper than police investigators as he solves the case while believing in Lisbeth's innocence throughout. And, as in the previous novel, gender-based violence and sexism in various forms is a common theme.