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?

Oh, finally.

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.

Via The Lede, Iran’s state-​sponsored Press TV seeks to prove that the iconic death of pro­tester Neda Agha-​Soltan hap­pened just like the plot of one of the worst movies of the decade:

The con­spir­acy theory pre­sented in the doc­u­men­tary sug­gests that Ms. Agha-​Soltan first sprayed fake blood on her own face, while pre­tend­ing to have been shot as part of a ruse intended to dis­credit Iran’s gov­ern­ment, and then was later killed by the two men who seemed to be trying to save her life, a doctor who has since fled Iran and her music teacher who remains there.

Next time, guys, maybe people will believe you if you choose a better plot. Chi­na­town? Get Carter? Twin Peaks, maybe?