Friday, September 25, 2009

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson
translated from Swedish by Reg Keeland

My husband got me the new DX Kindle for my birthday, having taken custody of the Cybook that he had gotten for me a few years before. To give the Kindle it’s first spin I wanted a page turner and this best seller both in Europe and in the U.S. seemed to fit the bill. I don’t normally read mysteries but I really enjoyed this and immediately purchased the second book in this trilogy.

The original Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women and the story takes place in present day Sweden. A disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist is approached by Henrik Vanger, a retired industrialist to attempt to find out what happened to his great niece who mysteriously disappeared 36years before. Blomkvist teams up with an unusual pierced and tattooed young girl, Lisbeth Salander, who is a genius investigator/hacker to try and solve the mystery. Lisbeth has been described in other reviews as having Asperger Syndrome but that is not clear from the book and I think it is also possible that she is just emotionally stunted by mysterious events from her past. In any case Lisbeth is a fascinating character. Obviously brilliant, emotionally distant but with rare and heartbreaking attempts to connect with someone. Although very young she is a survivor and does whatever is necessary to take care of herself. This is a part one of a trilogy so we only get glimpses of her background but I really want to read the other books to learn more about her. All the characters were well developed and I especially enjoyed the creepy and extended Vanger family. And the person at the heart of the mystery is also suitably terrifying. It was certainly a page turner with lots of interesting plot twists and a full conclusion to the mystery at hand. I highly recommend it.

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