I Read Books: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

This was huge as a novel and I’ve spent too much time trying to figure out why. Firstly we have two good viewpoint characters, Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged journalist who tracks down financial corruption and also Nazis (something for the dads) and Lisbeth Salander, hacker, oppressed victim turned vigilante, rides a motorbike and takes no shit (also something for the dads, but enough for the mums as well). We start with a small mystery – Blomkvist, who we are assured is a good journalist, has been found guilty of aggravated libel of Wennerström, a wealthy industrialist, having presented no defence. How has this happened?

This (hopefully) intrigues us enough to follow as Blomkvist deals with the minutiae of his life and the magazine he publishes, and into the main mystery of the novel. Henrik Vanger, another industrialist, whose niece has been missing, presumed murdered, for nearly forty years, hires Blomkvist to figure out what happened. (Blomkvist’s father worked for him when he was a toddler and so he followed his career; he also employed Wennerström briefly and so thinks he knows what happened and can offer some dirt on him). Before that he gets his security consultant to check Blomkvist out; they employ Salander.

Salander is under a guardianship order as she is legally mentally incapable due to her refusal to co-operate with the authorities after something happened (explained in later novels in the trilogy). After her old guardian dies her new one rapes her, and then she gets her revenge. Following this she briefly tangles with Blomkvist, who figures out on his own she is a hacker, but he takes it in his stride, accepting their differences, somehow getting inside her defences and hiring her as an assistant.

The main mystery itself weaves through Swedish history, including the country’s flirtation with Nazism, which was never resolved due to their neutrality in WW2. And here it’s intense Swedishness, with the places people live and their homes, the food and drink (so much coffee, so many open sandwiches), the details of TV and newspapers, industry and culture, lifts the elegantly crafted plot. Which, of course, is for the most part about the rape and murder of women.

Read This: A cleverly designed plot filled with the author’s knowledge and research
Don’t Read This: Horrid things happen to a lot of people
I Saw And Reviewed: The Girl In The Spider's Web a film of a posthumous continuation of the series by another author