A very quick piece of trivia around Larsson – he was a Swedish author and journalist who died in 2004 (Born 1954). This trilogy was the first of his books to
be published in the US and 2009 proved a bumper year for him as these books remained top of the bestsellers lists for much of last year. It is definately interesting to see how almost five years after his death, the books have finally jumped into the spotlight.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the first in the series and revolves around disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, a young private investigator with many dark secrets.
Blomkvist is asked by a wealthy industrialist to investigate the disappearance of a young girl (his niece) who went missing almost 30 years ago.
Apart from the investigation there are three other key story lines in play – the first being Salanders battle with her own demons, the second being the future of the magazine operated by Blomkvist and partner and finally the relationship which develops between Salander and Blomkvist.
Initially I found the story a little slow going, particularly as the characters were introduced. My wife says that the second book – which she has read – is much quicker and easier to get into .
The other issue for me was that it was the first book I was reading on the Kindle and it did take a bit of getting used to. As the story built itself up though it definately gathered momentum and I found it harder to put the book down.
Initially the writing style was a little difficult to get my head around. There are places where the dialogue comes across as a little stilted and you get the sense that there are some sentences which have literal translations from Swedish to English – the book was tranlsated – but after a while you find yourself getting used to it.
A lot of work was also put into the development of the characters and there is a lot of depth to them. There are no larger than life “American” style characters and that makes them very believable.
Title: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Author: Stieg Larsson
ISBN: 978-1-84724-545-8
This was probably one of the better reads and I rated it a four and half out of five with just the dialogue thing bugging me. A brilliant read.
You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R112.
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