"The Girl Who Played with Fire" by Stieg Larsson

"The Girl Who Played with Fire" was first published (in Swedish) in 2006.  It is the sequel to 2005's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."  The English-language version was translated from Swedish by Reg Keelund.

I saw the movie of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," and I liked it a lot.  Much later, I read the first few chapters of the novel while on vacation in Cambodia, and liked that as well.  But after seeing the movie there didn't seem to be much point in reading the novel.  At least not all the way through.

So I sought out the sequel.  Definitely NOT a hard book to find.  Even in Ayutthaya, an hour north of Bangkok, I managed to track down a copy in a department store.  This in itself gives some indication of how popular this book continues to be.

And while I do think it's a good book, I have to say that the first 50 pages or so are TERRIBLE.  Yes, they set up the conclusion to some extent, but I think it would have been much better if this book had started just before the murders of the two journalists.  The chapters covering Salander's travels in Grenada and return to Sweden make for boring reading, especially when the author spends two pages describing a shopping trip to Ikea.

After the first fifty or so pages, this book picks up speed, and more closely resembles "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."  This is a good thing, primarily because that was such a good book.  Larsson might have stumbled out of the gate with "Fire," but in the end it proves a worthy successor to the first novel in the series.

I would recommend this one, though I can't think of it as "classic" in any sense of the word.  It's good.  The plot is well thought out.  The characters - while somewhat annoying at first - grow interesting as events unfold.  It's a solid book, if forgettable.