PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesWhile The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo read like a Nordic Silence of the Lambs, its dynamic, brawny sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, reanimates the tropes of the political thriller ... Like spaghetti westerns, les superproductions of Luc Besson and Mathieu Kassovitz, and British chanteuses from Dusty to Duffy, Larsson's work demonstrates how American popular culture has colonized European art. Especially cinema. The author stages action sequences with the zest of a Hollywood filmmaker...a thriller with moral freight ...buzzes with ideas; even amid the carnage of the Grand Guignol finale, it fizzes with fury. And while Reg Keeland's flat translation preserves folds of fat...it ably indicts a system that empowers the empowered.
