KEY POINTS:
In 2004, the investigative Swedish journalist Larsson delivered his Millenium trilogy to a publisher. He didn't live to see the publication of his first, and now second books before he died of a heart attack. So far the books have sold five million copies.
The first, released last year, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was the crime writing hit of the year. We were introduced to investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and his very odd, accidental sidekick, the anorexic, bisexual, savant-like Lisbeth Salander. She's a brilliant hacker who solves complicated mathematical formulae for fun. She's violent and knows about weapons. She is almost a cartoon character - from a very dark comic book for grown-ups with a thing for tough sexy Swedish chicks.
Blomkvist is not quite as enigmatic a character but his personal life is anything but normal. He has a long-term relationship with a married woman whose husband knows exactly where his wife is when she's not with him. Everyone in Larsson's books is connected to each other in complicated ways and yet detached emotionally. It ought to be impossible to engage with them, and at times it is.
Crime fiction is made of unlikely pairings and strange, often hard-to-like characters, but Larsson's Salander is stranger than even the most febrile of imaginings. She has had two guardians: one a guardian angel sort, now in a home after having suffered a stroke. And an evil guardian, the abuser, who she attacked and tattooed on his groin a description of his crimes as a rapist pig.
The power is now hers, but she really should have killed him when she had the chance. She wouldn't have felt any remorse; she is, almost, incapable of remorse. She is almost incapable of any feelings. She was, in Dragon Tattoo, having a sexual relationship with Blomkvist - she does sex but not love - but that is now over and she is on the run from him.
There is a complicated plot involving sex trafficking and caricatures of evil villains. There are two murders and Salander is the main suspect and in hiding, from Blomkvist and the law. There are media alerts: Look out for a crazy, bisexual, dangerous but sexy Swedish chick. This is profitable: it allows us to learn more about her bizarre early story, which paints her as a psycho. As she is being hunted, she goes on the hunt for people from her past who have caused her harm. She remains hidden, which is rather the point.
Once revealed, or given a happyish ending, she loses her power as a character. We are given as many clues, if not more, than those (both good guys and villains) hunting her. She likes maths games and computer games. Larsson plays a game with the tradition of setting domestic reality alongside the nasty business of the crime genre: it's a tease.
The real action of the book is to bring the two back together - which is not giving anything away, there will never be anything conventional about their relationship. Larsson's a clever enough writer and plotter to get you there without losing his grip on his complicated story. I don't think it's as interesting as Dragon Tattoo but it's still (mostly) a ripper of a crime story which ends leaving nobody any the wiser.
Except the publishers, who know there will be an impatient readership for the final instalment of a trilogy about very strange goings-on in Sweden.
The Girl Who Played With Fire
By Stieg Larsson (Maclehose Press $37.99)
* Michele Hewitson is a Herald features writer.
