The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I pay attention to what other people are reading. When my husband and I travel I take note of people reading in airports, on the pool deck on cruise ships, around the pool in Vegas. The last couple of years, Stieg Larsson's books have been everywhere. But I had the impression that those books were dark, violent, mysteries. I swore off James Patterson for that kind of mystery.

But then I saw a piece on CBS Sunday Morning show, and I got intrigued by the author's life and death. Stieg Larsson churned out several novels as a hobby before he died of a heart attack at age 50. He never saw his works published and become international bestsellers.

When my daughter started reading them, I told her how I expected them to be violent. She had the same feeling about James Patterson, but she said "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" just had the one rape scene that was kind of the motivation for the rest of the story. By then I had my Kindle, and the Kindle version cost only $5.21. (I don't know how some Kindle books get deep discounts and some are stuck at a price higher than the paperback version, but that's another discussion.)

So I bought it, and I was hooked. The characters drew me in, with their separate stories that converged as I expected. I was most intrigued by Lisbeth Salander, the misfit, antisocial savant who hacks her way via the internet to helping solve the mystery. Then I read somewhere that the Swedish tile for this book is "Men who Hate Women," but it was too late to turn back; I was hooked.

Larsson's style is so fast paced, I sometimes wondered if my eyes could fly across the page fast enough to keep up. The ending is dark and disturbing, but I'm so caught up in the characters that I have to go on the next book of what the publisher is calling The Millenium Series. Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander continue solving mysteries in the next one. I give this one four stars.



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