I’ve rarely read a good thriller that didn’t, at some point, rely on coin­ci­dence to advance its plot. But noth­ing undoes a thriller like a poorly man­aged coin­ci­dence, & The Girl Who Played with Fire, the late Swedish mys­tery author Stieg Larsson’s dis­ap­point­ing follow-​up to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, con­tains sev­eral. The most bla­tant simply insult the reader’s intel­li­gence (I real­ize these won’t make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read the first book):

• Salan­der just hap­pens to walk into an unfa­mil­iar bar where her evil guardian just hap­pens to be talk­ing to the man he has hired to kill her. Just how small is Stock­holm?

The Seat­tle Weekly ran a great inter­view with my pal Sonya Schnei­der about The Thin Place, the new play she’s writ­ing for the Inti­man The­ater here in Seat­tle. The play will open in May and will star Gbenga Akin­nagbe, who played Chris Part­low on The Wire. Sonya is supremely tal­ented, and we’re all thrilled to see her get the break she deserves.

Here’s how the Weekly describes the play:

Garbage Boyz James Fred. Hit! Press, $12.95 paper (176p) ISBN 000-0-000000-01-6

Brix­ton sen­sa­tion Fred, in this peppy novel about a pair of cousins — Hesh, 17, and Mar­lick, 19 — who spend a week­end throw­ing a bunch of garbage off “Grammy’s ter­race” while their girl­friends are away in another coun­try sell­ing con­doms, tells a mem­o­rable tale of late teenage angst. The cousins drink car­tons of brandy in the bath­room together, take turns with the punch­ing bag while lis­ten­ing to Simon & Gar­funkel, and spend sev­eral hours sit­ting on park benches “chew­ing gum, kick­ing pigeons, and star­ing at the female passerby.” The ter­race is stocked with a great range of objects suit­able for chuck­ing, and all is shap­ing up to be “an entirely mad” week­end. The only prob­lem is that early Sunday morn­ing they hit an “elderly police­man on the head with a crate of tulips.” This leads to their arrest, and the rest of the novel is set in a “little prison” where the cousins are sub­ject to var­i­ous “little unpleas­antries, mostly involv­ing feath­ers and mis-​prescribed eye­glasses.” Garbage Boyz is a rol­lick­ing depic­tion of stu­pid­ity and dis­tress, and a fine addi­tion to the relent­less line of paper­back orig­i­nals that Hit! Press is spray­ing into the mar­ket­place. Read­ers look­ing for some­thing to glance at while on the can should turn else­where; Fred has cooked up some­thing a little more seri­ous here, which most office work­ers will enjoy over the course of three or four lunch hours.

Bobby has made Mailer’s tag his own, but this is an adver­tise­ment fa mice elf agin. I’ll be read­ing my poems at Myopic Books this Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 20,  at 7 pm. Details here. Daniel Borzutzky is also read­ing, so please stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.

How awe­some is it that Sawyer was blast­ing “Search & Destroy” last night.