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1-Page Summary of The Girl Who Played With Fire
Overall Summary
The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second book in a series of three, which began with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It takes place in Stockholm and focuses on two main characters—Mikhail Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, and Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant computer hacker who has a dark past. First published in 2006, it was adapted into a film that came out in 2009 and became very popular.
The novel contains four sections and a prologue. In the prologue, we learn that someone is held hostage in a dark room by an unidentified man who has been abusing her. As she sits there, she thinks back to when she was on vacation in Grenada after the events of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. She notices that Dr. Forbes, one of her neighbors at the hotel where she’s staying, beats his wife. Lisbeth uses her network of hackers to investigate Dr. Forbes’ past and finds out he doesn’t have any assets but stands to gain forty million dollars from his wife’s inheritance if they’re married for five years or more.
Lisbeth has been tutoring George in math. She ends up having a romantic relationship with him. When there’s a hurricane, the residents of the hotel go into the cellar to shelter from it. Lisbeth sees Dr Forbes struggling with his wife on the beach and realizes he is trying to kill her. She breaks off a chair leg and hits him over the head, knocking him unconscious. They take Mrs Forbes into the cellar as well. Later they find out that Dr Forbes was swept away by strong waves during Hurricane Katrina and died because of this incident
The second section of the book begins with Lisbeth returning to Stockholm. She buys a new apartment and sells half of it to Miriam Wu, in exchange for forwarding all her mail. Nils Bjurman, who sexually abused and raped her, is focused on killing her so that he can destroy the video recording she has as blackmail against him. After looking through Lisbeth’s medical records, Bjurman finds an incident labeled “All the Evil” and identifies someone from Lisbeth’s past who could help him track down where she is now living.
Lisbeth Salander returns to work at Milton Security. Her boss, Dragan Armansky, is angry that she left without notice and tells her that Holger Palmgren, who was her legal guardian before Bjurman, is still alive. Lisbeth had believed that Palmgren died of a stroke but now finds out he’s in rehabilitation center. She visits him and they are happy to see each other again. While there she sees a blond giant give her address to Bjurman and decides this man may be up to no good.
Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist, is investigating the sex trade business and how it involves corrupt officials. He hasn’t spoken to Lisbeth Salander in some time. Dag Svensson wants to help with the article by writing about his graduate thesis on the subject of sex trafficking. However, he doesn’t know that she hacked into Mikael’s computer and is interested in one person named Zala who was investigated for this topic.
In the third section of the novel, Lisbeth visits Dag and Mia to ask them about Zala. They are found dead shortly after by the police. Lisbeth is suspected of killing both Bjurman and Dag/Mia because her fingerprints were on their guns (which she used to kill them).
Blomkvist and Erika Berger decide to go over their research on the sex trafficking article for evidence linking it to the murders. Blomkvist suspects that Lisbeth is hacking into his computer files, so he leaves her a message offering help. She replies that he should look for information on Zala. Blomkvist takes her advice and questions Gunnar Bjorck about Zala in exchange for excluding him from the article.
