“The Girl Who Played With Fire”

Lisbeth Salander has survived the nightmarish reality of Sweden’s care system. She has been abused by men who wield considerable power in some of the nation’s most corrupt institutions. Now, after discovering cases of teenage prostitution, she takes justice into her own hands. “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” Stieg Larsson’s follow-up to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” gives birth to an avenging superhero, or more specifically a “psychotic lesbian SM Satanist” who reveals in one of the most captivating passages of the book that “there are no innocents…only different degrees of responsibility.” The Los Angeles Times says that the fast-moving book “can be like reading a movie.” And, in the words of the New York Times, it “boasts an intricate, puzzlelike story line that attests to Mr. Larsson’s improved plotting abilities, a story line that simultaneously moves backward into Salander’s traumatic past, even as it accelerates toward its startling and violent conclusion.”