Book Review – Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
January 21st, 2010
Highly Recommended
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson
Now this book is a real page turner! Winner of the Crime Thriller of the Year 2009 at the British Book Awards, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo successfully produces a thriller with a great crime plot. There are several stories very successfully interwoven that eventually collide with brilliant success.
This novel is the first of three written by the late Steig Larsson, who died before having any idea of what a raging success his trilogy would be. At the moment it is hard to step foot near a book store with out seeing these books prominently displayed. The trilogy is made up of this one… Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, followed by Girl who played with Fire and finally Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
Steig Larsson was a journalist and editor of a Swedish magazine until his death and it is around this backdrop that the book is set – in Sweden, for a magazine ‘Millenium’ which is facing some challenging times. The English translation has had a little criticism from those that read both languages for the quality of the translation… but as I understand no Swedish it all seems just fine to me! The original Swedish title also translates to ‘Men Who Hate Women’, which for obviously reasons in a lot more intriguing with it’s revised English name.
The Theme…
A middle-aged journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm. In the opening courtroom drama, Blomkvist loses a libel case brought by accused Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, and this has serious repercussions for the future of Millennium. In disgrace, Blomkvist agrees to be hired by Henrik Vanger, the aged former CEO of the Vanger companies, owned by a wealthy but dysfunctional dynasty. The old man offers not only to help his financially strapped magazine, but also to give him information to prove that Wennerström is corrupt. Officially, he is to spend a year writing the Vanger family history.
Blomkvist’s real mission, however, is to solve a cold case—the disappearance, some forty years previously, of Vanger’s great-niece Harriet when she was sixteen. Blomkvist encounters “the old Miss Marple closed-room scenario” with all the rich suspects marooned on the family estate on an island, “a village we grow familiar with, full of hostile locals peering out from behind their curtains”
Henrik Vanger believes that Harriet (his brother’s granddaughter) was murdered by one of his family members on the island. In addition, Harriet had given Henrik a present of pressed flowers every year since she was eight years old. On Henrik’s birthday the year after Harriet’s vanishing, he again received a present of pressed flowers, and he continued to receive such flowers, sent from various parts of the world, which he believes to be sent by the killer.
Blomkvist comes to feel that he can discover nothing new. But the real main character of the story now appears—Lisbeth Salander, an asocial punk who has been victimized by authorities throughout her life. By accident, she meets Blomkvist and the unlikely couple form another classic detective pair where the hunters become the hunted. When Blomkvist teams up with Salander, their delving into family secrets sheds a disturbing and shocking light on the four-decade-long puzzle.*
This really is a fantastic novel that demands your attention and time. There has been quite a few late nights recently whilst I have been enthralled in the twists and turns of this novel literally unable to put it down until I found out what happened!
If crime, thrillers or generally interesting, well written, easy to read books are your thing then I highly recommend Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Millions of people around the world can not be wrong… it is definitely a great read!
* Theme referenced from Wikipedia.org
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Categories: Book Reviews
