The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Stieg Larsson

 

Review: Janet Johnstone

 

This is first of the Millennium Trilogy by a Swedish author, a series which sparked something of a publishing cause celebre. Stieg Larsson was only 50 when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004, just a brief time before he delivered to a publisher the manuscripts of all three books.  Although a journalist, he had never before written a novel.

 

Larrson dips into his own experience by forming one main character, Mikael Blomkvist, as an economic journalist who has just lost a libel case brought against him.  Even though he knows he is in the right against the opposing forces, he opts not to appeal the case, but will have to leave Millennium, his economic magazine.  

 

In exchange for information about his opponent, he reluctantly accepts an offer from a retired leading industrialist, Henrik Vanger, to spend a year researching the mysterious disappearance 40 years earlier of Vanger’s 16 year old neice Harriet.  His cover story is to be writing up the chronicles of the Vanger family.

 

Blomkvist decamps to the family’s island where a good many of of the dysfunctual dynasty members still live and others have occasion to visit, and it is here that most of the action takes place as Blomkvist tries to delve into history and motive.

 

Unbeknownst to him, he is also under investigation by a detective agency using an asocial punk young woman who on the sly is a wizz at computer hacking. Enter the unique character of the book, Lisbeth Salander, an enigmatic delinquent whose tolerance level does not brook any restriction, including the law.  

 

The unlikely duo set about resolving the historic mystery while uncovering also a more contemporary series of murders all the while weaving through a dangerous maze of business and family secrets, uncovering dark right-wing fanaticism and misogyny in Sweden and exposing the moral bankruptcy of the capital world.

 

 

It is refreshingly different having a counter-culture young woman with social problems placed as a heroine, rather than a middle aged detective with quirks.  Salander is not above lashing back ruthlessly, and indeed the book does occasionally delved into violent portrayals of grisly deeds, but it is not just about violence against women as the forays into business corruption and right-wing politics provide a richer context than many crime thrillers.

 

The Millennium trilogy has sold more than 27 million books and the number is rising.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won the Crime Thriller of the Year award for 2009.

 

All three books have been made into films, and The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo is on release in Europe.  Naturally, Hollywood thinks it can do better and the book is scheduled for production there this year.