Sequels are rarely as good as the originals and “The Girl Who Played With Fire’’ is no exception. Salander is still in fine form, but the structural strengths of “Tattoo’’ have gotten flabby. It takes the better part of 200 pages for the lengthy story, centering on the Swedish sex trade, to take off.
Until then, Larsson is far too concerned with process, with both how journalists and police do their work. One would think that would be a positive in procedurals, but it’s not. If we can see the first murders coming 100 pages in advance, then Larsson’s inability to get to the point is a liability.
Fortunately, Salander keeps things interesting. Her sleazy guardian who raped her is back and determined to get his revenge; she tattooed “I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RACIST’’ on his body after videotaping his assault, so he couldn’t go to the authorities. Much to her surprise, she had become wildly attracted to Blomkvist, but the first book ends as she sees him with another woman, and now she isn’t speaking to him. In this book she not only switches partners, but switches gender preference.
She also becomes wanted for those murders alluded to, but she disappears from the action for far too long when the press and the constabulary go looking for her. Larsson has his own righteous ax to grind when it comes to the tabloid media circus, but that -- like too much in the book -- is predictable. He’s determined not to be gratuitous about the sex trade he’s exposing and he should probably be commended for that. But he could desperately have used the story of one of the exploited teenagers to put a face on the problems he was trying to expose.
Still, Larsson is too good a writer to make things dull. If it isn’t the page-turner that the original was, it at least has enough elements to keep things inching forward. Who is this mysterious Zala who seems to be the missing link not only to the murders, but to Salander’s back story as well?
