The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Today I will be reviewing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. This is the first in Larsson's Millennium trilogy which, incidentally, has quite a story in and of itself. Legend has it (and by legend, I mean, you know, news reports and such) that Larsson dropped off the three Millennium manuscripts to a Swedish publisher and then promptly died. Now, rumor has it, there may be a fourth unfinished manuscript somewhere but no one is for sure right now. Die hard Larsson fans are lighting little votive candles in prayer for a fourth book to appear, especially since the third just hit bookshelves this week.

In The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo we meet first Mikael Blomkvist, a leading Swedish investigative journalist and co-owner of Millennium magazine. Blomkvist has just been convicted of libel for a story he ran in his magazine on a corrupt Swedish businessman and is facing a couple months in jail.

Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger, another leading Swedish businessman, although elderly now, to write his family's memoirs officially. But unofficially, he is hired to solve the mystery of Henrik's niece, Harriet, who went missing at a family gathering in 1966. Blomkvist sets up shop for a year in one of Vanger's guest houses on a remote, northern island the family owns. He is reluctant at first, seeing the job only as an opportunity to get away from Stockholm and take stock of his life. But Vanger also dangles a very tantalizing treat in front of Blomkvist's nose. If Blomkvist agrees to take the assignment, Vanger will give him rock solid info on the corrupt business dealing of the man who accused Blomkvist of libel. Eventually, however, Blomkvist makes surprising headway on the disappearance case and finds himself immersed in the Vanger family drama and intrigue.

Second we meet Lisbeth Salander, a troubled goth/punk, brilliant researcher/hacker who is hired by Vanger to investigate Blomkvist to make sure he can be trusted. Salander is a loner, to say the least. Part of "The System" since childhood, she trusts no one. And with good reason as we find out shortly into the book.

When Blomkvist begins to uncover new information in the Harriet case, he convinces Vanger to allow him a research assistant. Salander is recommended since she did such an astonishing job with Blomkvist's background check. The two end up making quite a team and uncover much more than anyone went looking for.

Dragon Tattoo is a thrill ride, to say the least. I'm usually not a huge fan of the murder/mystery, intrigue genre but this book drew me in hook, line and sinker. But I'm going to be honest with you, dear reader. This book is not for the faint of heart. It is filled with quite graphic violence, torture and rape. Larsson leaves nothing to the imagination.

The characters, especially Blomkvist, are a bit stereotypical. Blomkvist is your run-of-the-mill hero. Somewhere between James Bond and Robert Langdon from The DaVinci Code. Impossibly suave and intelligent, no woman can resist him. Even the cynical and world weary Salander. He beds quite a few of the female characters in the novel and even draws the creepy and horrifying interest of one male character.

Those minor items aside, the plot is masterfully crafted. I love a book with some good twists and surprises and Dragon Tattoo has some doozies. Like any good murder/mystery, Larsson provides a number of possible suspects for you to ponder while traveling through the book. Larsson will masterfully lead you toward one suspect only to find it's a dead end and two more suspects have popped up. The book actually opens with a layout of the Vanger family tree. God, do I love a book that begins with some type of reference material - be it a family tree, or a map, or a timeline! It makes me all giddy! But believe me, you will refer back to that family tree often just to keep the characters straight. There are many times in the book when Blomkvist mentions consulting the family tree himself just to keep all the family members straight.

Larsson has a way with words that I can't quite articulate. At first I wondered if it was just the Swedish to English translation but I later found his poetic and lyrical prose flows throughout the book. I found myself actually stopping and admiring the words used rather than the story for one of the first times in my life. As if Larsson is poking fun at this very talent he possesses, at one point Blomkvist describes a character as "dafter than a syphilitic polecat" and then stops and muses "where do I get these metaphors from?". I was just wondering the same thing Herr Larsson!

Overall I give The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 4 1/2 bows. I would have given it the full five bows if it weren't for the graphic violence. The mystery and all its tangents are wrapped up neatly and satisfactorily at the end of the book it but still leaves the reader wanting more. As I said before, there are two more books in the trilogy. Second in line is The Girl Who Played With Fire. (Are you catching a theme to Larsson's book titles yet?) This book is on my "To Read" shelf in my library and should be making an appearance here on this blog very soon. Until them, happy reading!