‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ by Stieg Larsson

Every now and again I read a book to see what all the fuss is about. That’s how I ended up reading Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ saga and, eventually, Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’. Topping the bestseller lists worldwide and in particular in Europe right now is (Swedish) Larsson’s Millenium trilogy of which ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is the debut. Of all the books I have mentioned in this post I probably enjoyed it the most. The quality of the writing was the best I thought and I really liked Lisbeth Salander, the hacker PI lead protagonist of the series. I couldn’t stand Bella in ‘Twilight’ – I found her limp-wristed and rather pathetic – although in the films I felt she was portrayed as a much stronger character.

There is a lot in the media at the moment about the fact that Larsson’s books have all been posthumously published (and the ‘romance’ of success after death – see Eva Cassidy, Van Gogh etc) and that there is some debate over whether Larsson actually wrote them – some of those that knew him as a journalist think his writing was not of this quality. Blomkvist, the other protagonist, a journalist, natch, was also quite an appealing character, although I was slightly put off by the way women constantly throw themselves at him for sex, which he accepts, generously.

The story itself… well I am not really a fan of crime (since my early forays into Agatha Christie), but it was well set up, whipped along and I enjoyed the contemporary, technological elements which I understand critics are citing as one of the reasons for its popularity. It had a sort of double denouement too, both of which surprised me, but I wasn’t sure if that wasn’t because I hadn’t cared enough to really wonder. I’ve said before that I read to experience circumstances, feelings and emotions that I wouldn’t expect to experience as part of my ‘real’ life, but in the same way that I am not keen on reading about child abuse and such like in Misery Memoirs, I’m not all that interested in  psychopathic, sadistic, misogynistic, serial killers with torture chambers in their basement either. They’re just not my thing.