The Girl Who Played with Fire
Stieg Larsson
The same two leads return when murders put the hacker under suspicion, so read it after the first book.
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Books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo pairs a disgraced journalist with a brilliant hacker to investigate a decades-old disappearance. These six crime novels bring dark secrets, cold cases and driven investigators.
Books to read next
The Snowman
Jo Nesbø
Oslo detective Harry Hole hunts a killer who strikes with the first snowfall, in a grim Norwegian thriller with graphic violence.
In the Woods
Tana French
A Dublin detective with a buried past investigates a girl's murder in the woods where his childhood friends vanished, in a slower, literary mystery.
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
A husband becomes the prime suspect when his wife disappears, in a sharp, twisty page-turner told in two voices.
Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn
A reporter sent to cover murders in her small hometown has to face her family, in a gothic and disturbing novel that includes self-harm.
Mystic River
Dennis Lehane
Three boyhood friends are drawn together decades later when one's daughter is murdered, in a grim, character-driven novel with child abuse in its past.
How to choose
Pick by the part of the Dragon Tattoo that hooked you. To stay with Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, read The Girl Who Played with Fire next. For another cold Nordic investigation, The Snowman follows Oslo detective Harry Hole, is also graphic, and as a later Harry Hole novel it reads fine on its own. In the Woods is slower and more psychological, while Mystic River is a character study with real emotional weight. Gone Girl and Sharp Objects are shorter, and Sharp Objects is much darker. Be careful with content: Larsson's novel includes graphic sexual violence, and The Snowman, Sharp Objects and Mystic River deal with murder, self-harm or child abuse. Check content notes before choosing, and know that In the Woods is the least graphic of the six.
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