After finishing the first of Larsson’s trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I was eager to start reading the second book while enjoying our honeymoon in Puerto Rico. Vacationing with Dan was the perfect setting for starting the second book (while enjoying the sun, frozen drinks and cool waters of Palomino Island). Fanatics of Larsson’s first work will find that the sequel is more thrilling, addictive and filled with the same intriguing lead characters from the first book.
The sequel pairs up the trilogy’s lead figure, Lisbeth Salander, once more with journalist Mikael Blomkvist as the two work to investigate Sweden’s sex trafficking ring of young women by abusive men (many who hold respectable jobs in the police, security or political fields). Blomkvist is made aware of such dealings by Dag Svensson, a freelance journalist, who plans on publishing a story for Blomkvist that will expose many of the important Sweden participants. Svensson and girlfriend Mia Johansson, have spent many months researching into the abusive and sickening ways young women, many still considered “girls”, had been forced into sexual activity and then brutally murdered and disposed of. Weeks before the story is published Svensson and Johansson are found brutally murdered in their home and the fingerprints on the weapon? They match those of Lisbeth Salander.
This second of the three books was probably my favorite. You will want to keep reading as this book moves at a faster pace than the first. Now that the background is known about all of the characters (minus Lisbeth… that’s still to come), you will find as a reader that it is easy to get into this book and want to keep reading until the very end. I found that the end of this book did not satisfy me completing, as it left me WANTING, and IMPATIENTLY DESIRING the third book.
My advice? When you buy the second book, buy the third one as well! If you are checking them out from the library, burrow them both! You will HAVE to keep reading!
