The Girl Who Played with Fire-Book Project 2

The most intriguing part about Larsson’s books is the way he manages to make everything seem unrelated and the fit it all together. He spins a confusing and elaborate web all through the book and it doesn’t come together until the very end. This is what I loved most about the book, along with, of course, the thrilling and stimulating plot with twists at every corner. The main connection from The Girl Who Played with Fire is a man named Zalachenko. Everything leads to him in one way or another.
            His first link is Ronald Niedermann. He’s Zalachenko’s hugely built, but mentally slow son and right hand man. He carries out Zala’s orders, considering he has a hard time getting around due to an amputated foot thanks to Salander, but that comes later. Niedermann kills journalists Dag Svensson and Mia Johasson when they’re on the verge of releasing a book about a sex trafficking scandal and their investigation gets a little too threatening to Zala’s secrecy. Niedermann also kidnaps and tortures an girl named Mirium Wu, friend and lover of Lisbeth, to find out where Salander is.            
            At the time, Svensson and Johansson are working for Millennium and were hired by Mikael Blomkvist. Blomkvist is a friend of Salander’s from working together on a case in the first book, and throughout The Girl Who Player with Fire he continually tries to prove Salander’s innocence when she became the prime suspect for the murder of Dag and Mia. After their death, Blomkvist takes it upon himself to finish their exposé and find out who killed them. He starts by sorting through the list of johns they planned to expose, seeing as these men may have a strong motive for wanting them dead. This is how he stumbles across the name Gunnar Björk. When Björk trades information for his anonymity, Blomkvist gets closer than he realizes. As it turns out, Björk was involved in a secret section of the Soviet government, Säpo, that granted a man named Karl Axel Bodin, a Russian defect, asylum inside their country in exchange for information on the location of other spies. Björk became in charge of giving Karl a new identity, Zalachenko, and keeping his existence a secret. Coincidently, Nils Bjurman was a junior officer who happened to be there when Zalachenko arrived. Seeing as though he already knew too much, Bjurman was assigned as Lisbeth Salander’s new guardian after her former one had a stroke, not a coincidence at all. He was given this job to keep Salander under a close watch to make sure she never does anything that may give up Zala’s indentity.
            After a series of events, Björk enlists the help of Dr. Teleborian, a psychiatrist. His job was to keep Salander in psychiatric care since the age of twelve. He forged reviews on her mental state and lied about her problems. So what if she didn’t talk? She was right not to trust him, as she was cruelly and unfairly kept here for countless years. What prompted the need for Dr. Teleborian was the event known as “All the Evil”, which leads to the biggest shock of all… Lisbeth Salander is Zalachenko’s daughter! Wow! I just couldn’t even believe Larsson pulled that off.
             Salander described Zala as an abusive father to her mother. She hated him more than anything and tried to kill him multiple times, including an unsuccessful stab attempt. Clever from the start, one day Salander threw a gasoline-filled carton into his car to set it on fire, leading to her stay in psychiartric care because authorities were more concerned with keeping Zala’s existence hidden than this little girl’s well-being. They declared her insane and moved on. So, while authorites and journalists are tracking down for Zala for numerous crimes, Lisbeth Salander is also on the hunt to get revenge on her unbearable father responsible for her traumatic past. Somehow, Larsson spun a tangled web that all managed to make perfect sense.