The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

The second of the Larsson trilogy is just as much a page-turner as the first. This time the focus is on "the girl" as a victim of a murder investigation. While I have enjoyed Larsson's books, I have two complaints: 1. The girl's skills seem a little too good to be true; and 2. Larsson seems to really enjoy thinking about the torture of women. Of course he excoriates it, but it is a very dominant theme in his work. It's possible to read The Girl Who Played with Fire without having read the first in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I wouldn't.