An intense psychological thriller and an exposé of the international sex trade!

Mia Johansson, a bright young graduate student, is in the final stages of preparing her doctoral thesis on the controversial topic of sex trafficking. Her journalist boyfriend, Dag Svensson, approaches Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine, with the idea of extending this research into a series of articles on sex trafficking in Sweden. Knowing that this kind of exposé will reach into the heart of the Russian mafia, white slavery, the exploitation of under-age prostitutes and the sleazy, corrupt lives of some of the best known figures in Sweden's political establishment, Blomkvist jumps on board and throws himself into an investigation that is fraught with danger.

Seeking to slake a seemingly endless thirst for computer hacking, Lisbeth Salander, a former researcher for Millennium magazine, randomly trolls through Blomkvist's hard drive and learns of the plans for the upcoming articles. Her memories of a difficult childhood and her disgust for men that would treat young women as little more than commodities and slaves move her to involve herself in the investigation and take justice into her own hands. Her plans for revenge backfire and she soon finds herself charged with three murders. Forced into hiding, she must avoid both the police and those who would kill her to prevent the disclosure of a searing sex scandal.

If Lisbeth Salander isn't the most bizarre and off-the-wall literary character ever created, she'd certainly be a front-runner in any ranking. She's a skinny, hard-edged but attractive, on-again off-again feminist; a tattoed punk wild child with bisexual tendencies; an extraordinary computer hacker and skilled journalistic researcher with a photographic memory; a skilled boxer; a survivor of child abuse whose difficult memories of rape and sexual assault have turned into an abiding hatred and a desire for revenge on misognynists; and, last but not least, a multi-millionaire recluse whose desire for privacy would make Howard Hughes look like a party animal.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is a gutsy, hard-driving psychological thriller with a convoluted plot and a brilliant cast of richly, developed characters. It's a long novel, to be sure, but the writing is so rich, the plot is so deep, the dialogue is so convincing, and the characters are so twisted, that turning the pages deep into the wee hours just seems to happen all by itself. The ending, which is obviously a cliff-hanger intended to leave room for the third novel in the trilogy, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, is perfect ... it ends this segment of the story with all of the threads perfectly tied up but leaves a reader in the position of desperately wanting to go to the bookstore to pick up the copy of the third novel!

While THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE can, of course, be read purely on a surface level as a brilliant thriller, Stieg Larsson clearly had an interest in making a political comment on the sex trade in general. Obviously he wanted to create a vehicle to remind the world not only of the plight of these young women who are being abused but, perhaps more important, of the lack of action and any political will on the part of the world's governments to deal with the issue of human trafficking on an international scale.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss