The Girl Who Played with Fire recap

A year after the events of the first book, Salander returns to Sweden as Millennium prepares to publish a Dag Svensson expose naming powerful men in the sex-trafficking trade. Dag and his partner Mia Bergman are shot dead, and so is Salander's guardian Nils Bjurman; Salander's fingerprints on the weapon make her the prime suspect, and a national manhunt begins. Convinced of her innocence, Blomkvist investigates while Salander pursues the truth alone. The trail leads to a shadowy trafficking boss known as Zala, revealed to be Alexander Zalachenko, a defected Soviet intelligence officer long protected by a secret cell within the Swedish security police, and to Salander's own buried past: Zalachenko is her father, and the blond enforcer Ronald Niedermann, who committed the murders, is her half-brother. Salander confronts Zalachenko at his farm, is shot and buried alive, digs herself out, and strikes him down with an axe. Niedermann flees, and Blomkvist finds Salander gravely wounded but alive as the book ends on a cliffhanger.

Previously, in the first book: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, convicted of libeling the corrupt financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, was hired by retired industrialist Henrik Vanger to solve the decades-old disappearance of his grand-niece Harriet from the family's isolated island. Blomkvist teamed with Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant, damaged young hacker and investigator who works for Milton Security and lives as a state ward under a legal guardian. When her guardian, the lawyer Nils Bjurman, abused his power over her, she took brutal, calculated revenge and forced him into silence. Together Blomkvist and Salander discovered that Harriet's brother Martin Vanger was a serial killer continuing crimes begun by their father; Salander saved Blomkvist from Martin's killing room, and Martin died fleeing. Harriet was found alive, having killed her abusive father and gone into hiding. Salander then used her hacking skills to expose Wennerstrom and secretly steal billions from him, clearing Blomkvist's name and making herself wealthy. She had fallen for Blomkvist, but after seeing him with Erika Berger she cut off all contact and disappeared, leaving their relationship unresolved as the second book begins.

The murders of Dag Svensson, Mia Bergman, and Nils Bjurman are pinned on Salander because her prints are on the pistol, but the real killer is Ronald Niedermann, a huge blond man immune to pain who works for the trafficking boss known only as Zala. Salander's investigation, and Blomkvist's, uncover that Zala is Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet defector whom a secret faction of the security police has shielded for decades because of the intelligence he provided, and that this same faction had Salander committed to a psychiatric institution as a child to bury the truth. The deepest revelation is personal: Zalachenko is Salander's father, and Niedermann is her half-brother. Salander travels to Zalachenko's farm at Gosseberga to confront him. He and Niedermann shoot her three times, including a wound to the head, and bury her in a shallow grave. She claws her way out and attacks Zalachenko with an axe, gravely wounding him, before Niedermann flees. Blomkvist arrives and finds Salander barely alive. Both she and Zalachenko survive, Niedermann is at large, and the story breaks off unresolved, setting up the trial and reckoning of the next book.