The Girl Who Played With Fire

Stieg Larsson wrote the millennium trilogy and I would suggest that if you are going to read them you begin with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I read it a couple of years ago not realizing that the same characters go on with their lives in the next book.  Now I have just finished The Girl Who Played With Fire and I am aware  that  I needed to know what happened in the first book, which I have forgotten. I might also mention that the final book, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest will not be out in paper back until Fall.(unless you can get a British copy).

However,today we are discussing The Girl Who Played With Fire.  I am finding that I really like mystery stories.  This one has some gory scenes and if that bothers you, you may not like it. It is, however, a story that you want to keep reading to find out what happens next.  Lisbeth Salander is a brilliant computer hacker and  she is being hunted by the police, the reporters and her friends as she is considered a murderer of three people.

The biggest problem I have with the book is that Stieg Larsson was Swedish and all his characters and all the locations in the book are Swedish.  Reg Keeland translated the book from Swedish and did a great job, except he used the Swedish names.  This is where I was confused.  When you have the name of a place like "Handelsbarken on Hoensgatan" and a lot of other long names , it seems to slow the reading immensely.

If I ever wrote a novel, I would be sure to give each character a name that ,started with a different letter of the alphabet.  "Why?: you ask.  Just look at the names of a few characters in this book.  Blonkvist, Berger, Bublinski,
Bjorck,Bjurman, Bodin. Half the time I wasn't sure who did what to whom, but I kept reading because it was interesting

Let me say, though, other than a name problem, i really enjoyed the book and perhaps the names wont be such a problem for you.  Give it a try.

Until next time.
Be kind to one another.