The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

It was a roundabout way that I came to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I had followed its meteoric rise in the charts and watched it and its sequels, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest and The Girl Who Played With Fire get planted on just about every bestseller list on the planet. But I tend to hang back and watch and wait with these type of books if only to let the furor die down. I did that with both the Harry Potter and Twilight series, probably being one of the last people on earth to read those ones as well.

Actually it was the back story that intrigued me and hooked me into buying this book and reading it.

The author, Stieg Larsson, was a Swedish journalist who wrote all three books under the umbrella of the Millennium Trilogy. According to rumor, he wrote these books for the sheer pleasure it gave him and did not show it to a publisher until all three were completed. In 2004, he died of a heart attack at the age of 50 and didn't live long enough to see his work published. He died intestate, so all the earnings go to his father and brother and not his long time partner.

'Nuff said.

Now onto our story.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is literary crime fiction at its best, in the same vein as Elizabeth George and PD James.

This gripping page turner centers around two people. First there's Mikhael Blomkvist, a journalist who, when the story opens, is convicted of libel against a businessman involved in a supposed arms deal. While waiting to serve his prison sentence of a few months, he agrees- very reluctantly to delve into the mystery of Harriet Vanger- who disappeared decades earlier- at the request of her uncle, a wealthy businessman, Henrik Vanger.

Mikhael doesn't hold out much hope and it takes him the better part of a year to sort through the muck of the mystery.

Helping him is the mysterious Lisbeth Salander, kind of an adult Pippi Longstocking with tattoos. Lisbeth is an expert computer hacker and works freelance for a security company. Her own background and persona are mired in their own mysteries. She's one of the most complex characters you'll ever meet. No description that I could give could do her justice. You have to read about her and discover her for yourself.

It's set on Hedestat island where the winters are cold and bleak. I loved the feel of the book- it had a crime noir feel the same way that a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler novel might have.

I only had two small nitpicks with it.

First, Lisbeth being a computer hacker involved some passages that covered a lot of technical jargon which at times caused my eyes to glaze over.

Second, Mikhael an unassuming middle aged man seems to bed every woman he meets and I found that a little annoying. Considering the amount of female characters in the book, his success rate was practically 100%.

But those are small things. And truth be told, I couldn't put the book down and I can't wait to read the two sequels.

4/5