I liked this a lot more than I thought I was going to. Of course bits of it are over the top, it's supposed to be a thriller. and that one of its villains is lifted directly from a James Bond novel which is even named in the text. And despite that Larsson gets his knickers in a twist over prostitution which he conflates with sex trafficking - although the aspect of it that Blomkvist confronts is one of its less pleasant ones. However SL does seem to back up the Swedish model (not as nice as it sounds) of anti-whoring law under which the john is prosecuted (no, 'prosecuted', stop giggling at the back there). Thought experiment: if you wanted to combat prostitution why not make adultery an offence? Although in that case poor Blomkvist would find himself on a charge in that case. However in this second volume Blomkvist (there are far, far too many character names starting with B in this book) isn't quite the superstud he seems to be in the first book.
I though the OCD-ish description of items and consumer goods was a strange trait - one which is also found in "American Psycho" of course. And in a way with this fairly boring description of consumer goods and then sudden lurch into ultraviolence reminded me of David Foster Wallace (the horror! the horror!).