The second volume of Larsson’s Millennium
trilogy opens with Lisbeth Salander spending her ill-gotten gains from volume
one on a jet-setting, but low profile, lifestyle. Her absence from Sweden has
bothered few, but two people with a keen interest in her whereabouts (for different
reasons) are investigative journalist Mikail Blomkvist and lawyer Nils Bjurman.
Salander had saved Blomkvist’s life, and just about ruined (with good reason)
Bjurman’s.
Blomkvist is getting on with the day job,
working with colleagues on an expose of human trafficking of sex workers that
will compromise a lot of well-connected Swedes. Bjurman’s career is on the
slide thanks to Salander’s ministrations and he’s channelling his time and
efforts into finding and neutralising his nemesis.
Returning unnoticed to Stockholm, Salander
uses her high level hacking skills to check out what both Blomkvist and Bjurman
are up to. Both give her cause for concern. A name crops up that chills her to
the bone and prompts he to intervene at just the wrong time. Three dead bodies
later she is no longer unnoticed but identified and on the run, sought by
Blomkvist, wanted by the police and hunted by the traffickers.
The action is thick, fast, fastidiously
detailed (Salander’s tastes from pizza to underwear is lovingly revealed) and
increasingly violent. Often tense, rarely dull, with an exciting climax, the
book also reveals more (but still not all, one feels) of Salander’s back story.
All in all it is pretty good for the middle
book of a trilogy; and nothing here to put the reader off reaching for that
final volume.
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