Because this was a book club selection, I read The Girl Who Played with Fire without first processing the initial volume in Stieg Larsson’s mega-selling series. Heresy, I was told by a number of Larsson fans – how can one possibly understand the labyrinth of characters without starting from the beginning? Well, the truth is that in any decent series Book Number 2 is perfectly understandable on its own, something every regular crime fiction reader appreciates. What this showed me early on was twofold: Larsson readers are so enthusiastic that he is working some magic; and most such fans are not crime fiction aficionados, making the author’s achievement even more remarkable.
My reading confirmed both points. The Girl Who Played with Fire is an absorbing read, expertly knitted together and chock full of interesting characters, beginning with the series’ heroine, Lisbeth Salander, a reclusive, resourceful super geek. The reader greets her at the start of The Girl Who Played with Fire touring the West Indies, on the run for some reason from her native Stockholm. Meanwhile Mikael Blomkvist, an older crusading journalist (modelled, it seems on Larssonhimself, though we can’t ask him about it, as he died at age 50 of a heart attack before the first volume was published), is tracking down female sex slave traders. Things happen, Salander returns home, two investigators are murdered and suddenly Lisbeth is the accused. This barebones intro doesn’t do justice to Larsson’s created universe – dozens of characters proliferate and mesh together in unexpected ways.
The author’s plotting is superlative and, dare I say it, old fashioned in its voluminous cross hatching. This, I believe, is Larsson’s secret – he creates those super detailed plots that proliferated in the sixties and seventies, before the stripped-down, action-on-a-page style crowded it out. If Stieg Larsson had submitted his manuscript to an American publisher, I’m sure he would have been told it was bloated, to trim it by a half. Yet readers are hungry for captivating worlds, the larger the better (as is apparent in another genre, that of fantasy novels). Plotting is not Larsson’s only strength. His characters, the myriad cast of them, are all drawn strongly. His sense of place is evocative.
The Girl Who Played with Fire is not perfect and I haven’t come away an acolyte like many readers I know. A consequence of the interlocked plot, I grew tired of characters constantly revealing to each other news that I, the reader, knew. Lisbeth Salander is a wonderful character but occasionally veered towards cartoonish, something I deemed inevitable but regrettable. And whilst friends of mine wax lyrical about Larsson’s vaunted themes – a rage against misogyny, a demand for vigilante justice – I appreciated them but was not moved. In the end, I judge The Girl Who Played with Fire as a delicious, crisply plotted romp of a thriller, replete with fresh characters, places and twists. Will I read Books 1 and 3? Perhaps but not just yet.