The Girl Who Played with Fire

A Lisbeth Salander Novel

By: Stieg Larsson

Narrated by: Simon Vance

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Lisbeth Salander returns in the next installment of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series: Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, this is a “gripping, stay-up-all-night read” (Entertainment Weekly). • Also known as the Millennium series

The next installment of the Millennium series: Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.

Look for the latest book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, The Girl in the Eagle's Talons, coming soon!©2009 Stieg Larsson; (P)2009 Random House

excellent thriller

I am rather new in this genre, but I find that Larsson is a master storyteller. Indeed, the story starts a bit slow, with background info and descriptions of the people involved without nothing really striking happening, but this works well to build the scaffold of the story, and once this is ready it shoots out like a rocket. I could not stop listening to the third part and heard it in one single sit (into an untimely hour). Kudos for Larsson.
Simon Vance delivers a decent job, he is not my favourite reader, but he never bothered me or distracted my attention from the story, so I take him as successful.
The very end of the book is one of the best closures I have read.
All in all, full marks for this audiobook.

For my followers

Over ten thousand people gave this five stars and another 3700 gave it four stars and it has been reviewed bunches. So only my followers will read this.

This being book two, it is almost as good as book one. Book One was a tiny bit better. If you have not read book one and this is on sale go ahead and get it. This is pretty much a stand alone novel, even though they refer to book one events, it is not necessary to the story.

Book one had lots on Swedish economy which this one does not have and that is good. In book one I wished for more on Salander and in book two I got more of Salander then I really wanted. Novel characters have a tendency to lose there novelty when you spend a lot of time with them as you do in this novel.

Toward the end of this almost 19 hour book I was ready for the ending. I felt the book went on way too long. Most of the reason it was so long is the details we don't really want. Most mornings you get to hear actually what the characters have for breakfast. When a character gets dressed we hear actually what he/she is wearing, color, type of shirt, coat, etc.

Did you know that mace is illegal in Sweden? I got a little tired about references too bad American Movies. If you don't like American Movies, don't pay to watch them.

The narrator was good, even though one character sounds exactly like Count Dracula, which made him hard to take seriously.

A Great Book!

This is completely worth the download. I would recommend the first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so that when you download this book you will understand some of the background. If you don't you still will find this a great book!

Great but....

I loved the story, with one exception. Larsson frequently jumps around telling the story from a number of character's point of view. I have no problem with this. However after the first sentence in which says the name of the person we are now following, he resorts to "he" or "she" rather than the name. And there are an extensive number of characters. I frequently found myself confused at who's story we were reading now. It is irritating to have to rewind and find that one second where the name was mentioned. Granted, this was meant to be read, rather than listened to, but it is not very good writing technique. I got the impression that Larsson was so deeply engrossed in his own story that he wrote he or she to save time, intending to go back and replace them with names but never did.

Otherwise the story was great, a little slow at the beginning but still engrossing to the point I did not want to stop listening.

Credit or purchase worthy!

I was skeptical about even starting this series. I read some of the reviews on this particular book and saw that someone had posted a review saying that this book was Erotica. I have no idea what book they read but there was no "erotica" feel for me. It has a sex trafficing scenario so what else would you expect?. Looking forward to listening to the final book with a heavy heart.