The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)

A 24-year-old computer hacker sporting an assortment of tattoos and body piercings and afflicted with Asperger Syndrome or something of the like has been under state guardianship in her native Sweden since she was thirteen. She supports herself by doing deep background investigations for Dragan Armansky, who, in turn, worries the anorexic-looking Lisbeth Salander is "the perfect victim for anyone who wished her ill." Salander may look fourteen and stubbornly shun social norms, but she possesses the inner strength of a determined survivor. She sees more than her word processor page in black and white and despises the users and abusers of this world. She won't hesitate to exact her own unique brand of retribution against small-potatoes bullies, sick predators, and corrupt magnates alike.

Financial journalist Carl Mikael Blomkvist has just been convicted of libeling a financier and is facing a fine and three months in jail. Blomkvist, after a Salander-completed background check, is summoned to a meeting with semi-retired industrialist Henrik Vanger whose far-flung but shrinking corporate empire is wholly family owned. Vanger has brooded for 36 years about the fate of his great niece, Harriet. Blomkvist is expected to live for a year on the island where many Vanger family members still reside and where Harriet was last seen. Under the cover story that he is writing a family history, Blomkvist is to investigate which family member might have done away with the teenager.

So, the stage is set. The reader easily guesses early that somehow Blomkvist and Salander will pool their talents to probe the Vanger mystery. However,Swede Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is no humdrum, formulaic whodunit. It is fascinating and very difficult to put down. Nor is it without some really suspenseful and chillingly ugly scenes....

The issue most saturating The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that of shocking sexual violence primarily against women but not excluding men. Salander and Blomkvist both confront prima facie evidence of such crimes. Larsson's other major constituent elements are corporate malfeasance that threatens complete collapse of stock markets and anarchistic distrust of officialdom to the point of endorsing (at least, almost) vigilantism. He also deals with racism as he spins a complex web from strands of real and imagined history concerning mid-twentieth century Vanger affiliations with Sweden's fascist groups.

But Larsson's carefully calibrated tale is more than a grisly, cynical world view of his country and the modern world at large. At its core, it is an fascinating character study of a young woman who easily masters computer code but for whom human interaction is almost always more trouble than it is worth, of an investigative reporter who chooses a path of less resistance than Salander but whose humanity reaches out to many including her, and of peripheral characters -- such as Armansky -- who need more of their story told.

Fortunately, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in English translation will be followed by two more in the Millennium series: The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Air Castle that Blew Up. I can't wait. Larsson also made a 200-page start on a fourth book, but sadly he succumbed to a heart attack in 2004 and his father decided the unfinished work will remain unpublished.

I recommend this international bestseller to all who eagerly sift new books for challenging intellectual crime thrillers, who luxuriate in immersing themselves in the ambience of a compellingly created world and memorable characters, who soak up financial and investigative minutiae as well as computer hacking tidbits, and who want to share Larsson's crusade against violence and racism.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a masterwork of fine craftsmanhip. When I reached the final page I was disappointed that there was no more to read. I did not want the story to end. The characters are too intriguing for this to be the end. Apparently this was the first novel in a trilogy by the brillant writer, Stieg Larsson, who unfortunately died in 2004: the book contains a tribute to him and his career. I cannot wait to read the sequels scheduled for release in the USA in 2009.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an international best seller and is set in Sweden. It takes a little effort to get accustomed to all the Swedish names and places but then the story moves with lightening speed. There are two key plots happening simultaneously. In one, a Swedish financial investigative journalist publishes a libelous attack about a powerful industrialist and is sentenced to jail, fined a ruinous sum, and has his career torn to shreds. Another industrialist, Vanger, hires the journalist to investigate the 36 year old disappearnace of his then 14 year old grand niece. There has been no trace of her in all these years and she is assumed dead. Yet, every year on his birthday, he receives a mysterious gift of a pressed flower, mimicking a gift his missing grandniece used to give him when she lived there. Vanger, an old man, is tormented by the flower gifts, and wants one more chance to find out what happened to her and who killed her. What the journalist uncovers about the Vanger family's hitherto unknown secrets and connections to the Nazis, will have you hanging on the edge of your seat.

The book is titled after yet another character, Lisabeth Salander, a societal outcast and social ward of the State, uncivilized without any desire to obey societal norms, and replete with piercings, tattoos, and a goth/biker appearance. In short, at first glance a totally undesirable and unsympathetic person. She is a researcher with a corporate security firm and ends up working with the journalist. In truth, she is a survivor of abuse in all forms with low self esteem, and an inablity to trust. She is a genius with Asberger's Syndrome, a form of autism, who sees patterns in things ordinary mortals miss and uses incredible computer hacking skills to accomplish her goals. She is fascinating: ruthless and tough to a fault, yet internally vulnerable, struggling to comprehend her own feelings. She has an appeal that draws you to her, rooting for her, and wanting to understand her. Lisabeth is unforgettable, unlike most characters that populate mystery thrillers. There is such depth here.

The book is a thriller on many levels: The story about the Vanger family itself, the journalist's crusade to redeem his reputation, Lisabeth's vendettas and development, and of course, the truth about what actually happened to the missing Vanger heiresss. This is a superb novel and impossible to put down. Utterly stunning. Probably the year's best book. SUMMER 2009: SEE MY REVIEW OF THE SEQUEL, "THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE", ANOTHER OUTSTANDING BOOK.

Henrik Vanger, an elderly Swedish industrialist, has long been receiving the same anonymous gift on his birthday: a single framed flower. He is convinced the series of flowers has something to do with his great-niece Harriet who vanished decades ago in mysterious circumstances when she was just 16.

Vanger coerces a disgraced and prison-bound journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, to do some research into the disappearance. In exchange for information on his niece, Vanger promises Blomkvist enough dirt to take down the rich man who is sending him to jail.

So begins "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," a blockbuster best-seller in Europe. As Blomkvist moves closer to the truth, he teams up with the titular character, a tattooed detective named Lisbeth Salander who's the real star of the show. Together they uncover things that stun even Blomkvist, a crusading financial reporter who thought he knew all there was to know about the rot of corruption, the myriad abuses of power and the darkest sides of ourselves.

The novel is long and sometimes feels even longer; it takes its time threading out the dense plot. There's a lot going on here. This is the kind of book that provides you with a family-tree chart upfront; by midpoint you may be wishing there were even more aids offered by the author to keep track of things.

There is a series of horrible crimes at the heart of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," but I hesitate to call this work a thriller. It's a crime novel, yes, but it has more on its mind than generic conventions. The author, the late Stieg Larsson, was a journo in the muckraking tradition, like his character Blomkvist. The book serves up a heapin' helpful of essay that tastes like story but isn't. And while the mystery element is shockingly compelling in spots, it's also surprisingly unsurprising in others.

A million Europeans can't be wrong, and I'd be dishonest to say there's nothing worthwhile about this novel that is so popular across the pond. Despite its stop-and-go pace and tortuous (and sometimes tortured) construction, there is a serious emotional undertone to the book that is undeniable.

If you're not yet bored with stories that present villains you've seen a hundred times before -- e.g., reactionaries, racists and capitalists -- you might just enjoy this. Me, I really wanted to like this book and I did, but just barely. It's a lesser "Smilla's Sense of Snow," and for many that's obviously enough.

The novel is really rich in detail and quick paced -- And incredibly moving in depicting the struggles faced by its female protagonist. This novel somehow brings off having two really well drawn protagonists, one male, one female that one can empathize with. A middle aged journalist, and a troubled but incredibly talented young woman who works as a PI intersect to solve a labyrinthine plot. Lisbet's story would have made an incredible novel on its own. She has Aspergers and is trapped in an awful school /social system with no advocates and non-existent mental health services. It is really dark in its themes somewhat like the Kite Runner. The complex mystery, thriller aspects are really good, and then the whole other aspects of the novel which is also a social comment on society in Sweden, journalistic ethics, misogyny, and gut-wrenching sexual violence. So prepare to be disturbed by the darkness it depicts.

The only thing that bothered me a little, though the incredible characterizations and plotting made up for it totally was the out of time technology -- It seemed like the novel was set in the 90s, but all of the technology action seemed to be happening in the late 2000s. So the technology used in the plot time lines seemed a decade out of whack sometimes. I will go back and read it and see if its something I misunderstood.

All in all, its one of the best mystery /thrillers I've read from the last decade. In fact comparing it to the Da Vinci Code, the characters are not simplistic one dimensional cut outs at all. The rich characterizations and explorations of dark behaviour remind me of Elizabeth George. I'm waiting for the two final books of this trilogy. It is so sad that the author has passed away and we won't be meeting the characters for more than just 3 books.

(Warning-Possible (very small) spoilers)

The writing is, overall, quite disjointed. The first thing that struck me was that I was 85% certain that I knew the identity of the villain as soon as the character was even SPOKEN about, much less introduced. Needless to say, I was 100% certain when the villain does something dumb that shows him to be the bad guy... and no one catches on. Not surprisingly, I had also been able to warrant a very good guess as to what happened with Harriet.

I found the character of Blomkvist kind of a drag. It's hard to pull for someone who is so BLAH. He ruined his marriage by continuing to sleep with Erica, but I'm never sure WHY. She's married, it is clearly NOT the great love of his life, and they have little to no real chemistry. The 'relationship' seems forced, and to be honest it skeeved me out that she would tell her husband when she was going to sleep with Blumkvist. Eww.

Blumkvist is totally dense and doesn't pick up HUGE clues about what happened with Harriet, even though it's pretty obvious who the bad guy was, and the answer to what happened to her (without the details of how) is there the entire time. The answer is so ridiculously in your face, you almost feel let down when it turns out to be what you always knew it was. I figured with the reviews here, the solving of the crime must pack quite a punch! I was wrong.

To top it all off, the writer makes sure to let us know that, on top of being a bad husband & an idiot, Blumkvist is also a crap parent. Woo woo, what a hero. He's an idiot who will (LITERALLY) sleep with anyone and has no emotional depth. WHY were we supposed to be rooting for him??

Salander was (obviously) the more interesting character here. But I feel like the author took a certain joy in having her treated like terribly. Seriously, what else ABSOLUTELY AWFUL could happen to this poor girl? The ending angered me to no end. She finally makes an enormous emotional leap, only to have her hopes smashed by the idiot with NO EMOTIONAL DEPTH!
And of course he remains oblivious to the carnage he has wrought with this ridiculous 'relationship' with Erica.

Seriously, I hated the character of Blumkvist & really feel he ruined the whole book. Lisabeth should have been the main character and the entirety of the book should have been told from her perspective. Of course, had that happened, the book would have been about 200 pages long... because Lisabeth would have figured it out PRONTO.

The writer used the dumber character to try and slow down the 'climax' of the (paper thin) story.