Book Log 2010 #59: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steiger Larsson

The second entry in the Millennium trilogy picks up some time after the first book ends. Mikael Blomqvist is back at Millennium and working on an expose about the sex industry with a freelancer and his soon-to-be Ph.D. fiancee. When both are shot as part of a triple killing, the only hard evidence - fingerprints on the murder weapon - point to Lisbeth Salander as the killer.

Salander, recently returned to Sweden after nearly a year abroad, works to clear her name and to settle some old scores. We also learn a great deal more about her background, which winds up having a direct tie to the sex trade investigation and the murders. Blomkvist adds his help, running down leads and appearing at just the right time as needed.

I did think this book took more time to get going than the first one in the series - it seemed to take a couple of hundred pages to set up the rest of the book - but once things got going they moved quite nicely. The background information into Salander's past was also quite welcome, as it put "All the Evil" into context, and goes a fair way into explaining Salander's social maladjustment and strong (if peculiar) sense of morality.

Kind of sad to think there's only one more book in the series.