The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
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Book Reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Book Review: A Twenty First Century Mystery Tour De Force
Summary: 5 Stars
If There Wasn't Death
Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair At Styles was published in 1920. She wrote the first great mystery tour de force in 1924. Every mystery fan remembers The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Since then there have been a handful of books which stood out as outstandingly innovative while faithfully following the classic detective story rules. These are the books that leave the readers with a jolt in the solar plexus. Some do it with the climax, like Roger Ackroyd and in the 70s, Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying; some do it with a plot and writing that transcends the genre but staying within the rules, the unique, The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.
Now in 2008 comes Stieg Larsson (and he died before the books were published). Most of the reviewers, including the venerable Machiko Kakutani of the NY Times tend to give away the plot. I skipped the details so that when I reached about page 253, the blow to the pit of my stomach was as hard as a Muhammad Ali punch.
It starts off inocuously enough. Mikael Blomkvist loses a case in court for journalistic zeal for his own publication. And we are introduced to the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander. Her horrible past is revealed later and the book goes forth on the sure footed prose of the writer, who without any over writing, maintains interest by plot creation and characters that are believable. No, Blomkvist is not a detective but he's piecing together a mystery that happened years ago, disappearance of young Harriet Vanger from a crowded party in a small island whose exit is cut off by an accident.
A classic Golden Age plot, surely.
Poirot had done it many times, delved into the past and came up with an answer.
Blomkvist reluctantly takes the job that has baffled police and everyone else for forty years. How could anyone miss a clue after such thorough investigation? That is one of the major plotting factors that will delight any reader, particularly of the old school such as myself, who venerate the Christie,Sayers, Stout kind of writers.
No more of the plot.
The writing. Absolutely gorgeous without long metaphors or description of the weather. The interweaving of the characters is natural, convincing and at times produces envy. Who could have a girl friend married to someone else (happily) and would come to Blomkvist's bed when he's alone and not make any demands?
The little village of Hedestad is like where Miss Marple might have lived. And the Vanger family . . . ay, tread carefully here, they have the secret . . .
One wishes as the book speeds along that it was longer and the evening by the fireplace was prolonged.
A highly satisfying, wonderfully literate, sophisiticated mystery that will have you squirming with delight.
Book Review: My new favorite mystery...
Summary: 5 Stars
For many years, my very favorite mystery has been Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George. But after reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, I now have a new favorite. This book is not just well written, but the plot will haunt you.
Mikael Blomkvist is a Swedish journalist and part owner of the financial magazine, Millennium. Down on his luck, he receives a very lucrative offer from the rich and aging industrialist, Henrik Vanger. Vanger wants to hire Blomkvist for an entire year. First, he wants Blomkvist to write a book about the Vanger family. Henrik believes his relatives to be "for the most part thieves, misers, bullies and incompetents." Henrik claims that "this story will make Shakespeare's tragedies read like light family entertainment." But the real reason for hiring Blomkvist is that Henrik wants the writer to revisit the disappearance and probable murder of his niece, Harriet, 36 years ago. Henrik has conducted his own amateur investigation over the years and "Blomkvist wondered whether this was an unhealthy obsession or whether over the years, it had developed into an intellectual game. What was clear was that the old patriarch had tackled the job with the systematic approach of an amateur archaeologist."
At first, Blomkvist believes there is nothing new to be discovered. But little by little, new light is shed on old clues and a clearer picture emerges. Blomkvist needs the services of a researcher/investigator, and so Lisbeth Salander is hired. Salander (the girl with the dragon tattoo) is young, disturbed, anti-social, and perhaps suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. But she is an incredibly talented investigator with a photographic memory and the ability to hack into computers. The two make a good team. The closer they get to unveiling the truth, the more their lives are at risk. I carried this book around with me for several days until I was done--I just couldn't put it down.
What makes this book even more fascinating are the circumstances surrounding the book and the author. Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist who died in 2004 of a massive heart attack at the young age of 50. He had three complete novels written but unpublished at the time of his death. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first of what has become known as the Millennium Trilogy. Originally written in Swedish and published in 2005, the English translation was released in 2008--winning a number of posthumous awards for Larsson. The second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire reunites Blomkvist and Salander and will be released in the United States on July 28, 2009. I have already ordered a copy!
Book Review: This book is an instant Classic!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Stieg Larsson is a Genius!
Book Review of "The girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
First off, if you cannot stomach reading about graphic sexual abuse, then you should pick a book with some lighter fare. Having said that, this suspense thriller from the late Stieg Larsson will keep you on the edge of your seat. At 600 plus pages, it's a hefty mystery but I finished it in record time, and you know a book is good when you reach the last page and you feel wanting for more.
The story begins with Mikael Blomkvist, a publisher of a magazine titled Millennium who is sentenced to 3 months for libel against a corporate titan. The plot gets going when he is approached by an old retired CEO Henrik Vanger, former head of the Vanger corporation. As he tells Blomkvist, he is officially hired to write the family biography but in actual fact Vanger wants him to try to solve the decades old mystery of his grand niece Harriet Vanger's disappearance. To deepen the mystery, every year after Harriet's disappearance, Vanger receives a flower from an unknown person, a tradition which Harriet had started when she was eight.
The book's title character is perhaps the most intriguing- Lisbeth Salander, a skinny 24 year old 90 pound, pierced and tattooed goth chick with a distaste for authority figures who has Asperger's syndrome and incredible computer hacking skills.
As a murder mystery Tattoo would have been an excellent read but it is so much more. It exposes the dark underbelly of Swedish financial politics, abuse of social services by authority figures (Salander is directly victimized in one scene) and right wing misogynist attitudes towards women in general. After reading this book I can understand why it was originally titled "Men who hate women" although Dragon Tattoo is a catchier title.
Like many other readers worldwide I can't wait to get my hands on the next two books in the series " The Girl who played with Fire" and "The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest". Larsson's untimely death in 2004 was indeed a great loss to the world of literature in general and crime fiction in particular.
He has left a lasting legacy which readers will enjoy and cherish for generations to come.
Well done Stieg. Rest in peace.
Book Review: A gripping murder mystery
Summary: 5 Stars
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from her family's home town during the aftermath of a violent car accident. Ever since then, her grandfather, Henrik, has been obsessed with finding her murderer; now that he is approaching the end of his life, he needs to have the mystery solved once and for all. To that end, he hires recently disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist to re-examine all the evidence and find the answer, under the pretext of writing Henrik's biography. Along the way, Mikael acquires the aid of Lisbeth Salander, a skilled hacker who can find the information that no one else can. As they examine the clues, they find themselves drawn into a mystery that is far more than just the disappearance of Harriet, uncovering deeply buried family secrets and a serial killer that has been creating new victims for more than 50 years. The ending will surprise you!
I had a hard time getting into this book. The beginning deals almost exclusively with the financial shenanigans at Mikael's magazine, Millennium, and it is not particularly interesting to read. There is a lot of necessary character development of Mikael and Lisbeth, as well as of the more major supporting characters, but at times it seems to just drag on. However, once we get into the mystery, and especially when Mikael starts to break new ground, the book gets fantastic. I had a hard time putting it down, and spent a lot of time reading at work when I shouldn't have been. Once the mystery was solved, the book then delved into Lisbeth putting her skills to use in taking down the man who had sued Mikael for libel at the beginning of the book, and then the story gets a little bit tedious again, although still interesting. I was rather disappointed with the ending, until I found out that there will be more in the series.
Be warned that while this is not an exceptionally violent book in general, there is a lot of sadistic violence as a centerpiece of the mystery. Some parts are absolutely brutal to read and may turn your stomach a little. Also, don't forget the family tree that we are given in the beginning of the book; once you get to Mikael's investigation of the Vangers, it will prove to be invaluable. Overall, this was a fantastic book, a real page turner once you get to the meat of the story. Looking forward to the next in the series.
Book Review: Scandinavian Sister in Crime
Summary: 5 Stars
Dysfunctional families often provide great fodder for mystery. Stieg Larsson uses the formulaic "locked room mystery" and instead of ten little Indians populates the crime scene with members of a vast family enterprise who comprise an important part of Sweden's industrial elite.
What happened to Harriet Vanger, beloved niece of the family's patriarch, who disappeared from the face of the earth in 1966? The question has haunted Henrik Vanger for thirty -six years. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist. Blomkqvist facing a short stint in the pen after a conviction for the criminal libel of another Swedish industrialist, has not many other job prospects. He agrees to spend a year writing a family history while looking into the details of the unsolved crime. In his work. Blomkqvist is eventually joined by Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant, tattooed and pierced freelance researcher,whose computer skills give her access to information not generally available to the public, or even the police.
The amateur inquiry into this extended clan quickly focuses on several of the family's black sheep, members with strong political sentiments before and during the Second World War. Could these sentiments have may have triggered an apparent murder a generation later? Perhaps, the journalist wonders, the clusters of insanity with certain branches of the family tree contain homicidal tendencies not previously detected. Or maybe the motive was greed, was young Harriet the natural successor to her uncle Henrik.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the first part of a trilogy delivered by Larsson prior to his untimely death in 2004. It quickly became a huge bestseller, not just in Sweden, but throughout Europe. Originally entitled Men Who Hate Women this part delves deeply into the evils of misogyny.
Throughout the novel, Larsson pays tribute to female mystery writers, among them Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, and Sara Paretsky. The late New England writer Al Blanchard once described to me his membership in Sisters in Crime as being an "honorary sister", Larsson honors the craft and production of women writers in the genre.
This book will make you hungry for the sequel.