The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I am a big believer in "reading the book before seeing the movie," which is why when I saw the trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I knew that this book would become a must on my books to read list. Stieg Larsson's posthumous best-sellers follows an unlikely team on their quest to catch a culprit involved in a forty year old unsolved missing persons case. Mikael Blomkvist, an acclaimed journalist, has just committed his greatest career blunder. After publishing a story with falsified claims, he is committed of libel and forced to serve three months in prison. With the realization that his continued occupancy and involvement with Millennium, a magazine in which he holds the title of both co-founder and publisher, would damage the magazine rather than aid it, he quietly slips away from the media scene in order to take a much needed hiatus. No sooner does Blomkvist resign than he is approached by the legal-adviser to Henrik Vanger, a business tycoon and the uncle of a sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared nearly forty years earlier. Vanger, now in his eighties, contacts Blomkvist with the hope that Mikael will be able to determine what happened to his beloved niece and put his mind to rest once and for all. Simultaneously, the reader is introduced to Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed and pierced surveillance agent mastermind, who works for Milton security. Salander is far different from most twenty-four year old women, not only in appearance but also in behavior, as she is considered asocial and has thus been pronounced legally incompetent. As the novel progresses it becomes evident that Salander has trust issues, for she is often unwilling to partake in a lasting relationship. When Blomkvist decides that he needs a research assistant, Salander is brought on to the investigation. The result is momentous, as the atypical team discovers a sixty year-old secret that has been buried under a long line of family denial.

The first three hundred pages (out of nearly six hundred) are relatively devoid of action. The beginning half of the book, while interesting, basically just serves to provide background information, and establish the base of the novel. The first half of the book describes Blomkvist career blunder, and the character's lives pre-investigation in vivid detail. While I enjoyed this section, I did not feel that it was extremely compelling or of great importance to the story as a whole. Once Blomkvist began to obtain evidence and Salander was brought on, however, the story began racing toward a climax. In a matter of pages the novel went from acting as a simple informational read, to an intense page-turner. I found myself consumed by the character's actions, and felt as though I too had become a part of this murder mystery thriller.

Although The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has climbed near the top of my favorite books list, there were a few criticisms I would offer the novel. The main element I found that irked me about the book was the financial and political references. Blomkvist works at a magazine that deals with mostly financial and political stories. His entire career blunder is centered around a corrupt industrialist billionaire, Wennerström. Blomkvist and his attempts to expose Wennerström's crimes, become a sub-plot within the actual story, however, I found that I did not quite understand this sub-plot, simply because I do not speak financial terms and lingo. I thought that the story would have been more entertaining and interesting had this sub-plot either been down-played, or removed altogether. In addition to this, I found that many of the breakthroughs Blomkvist and Salander discovered in the case were chance findings. All of the clues and leads they discovered seemed like they were something no short of miraculous, which made the book feel slightly unrealistic at times.

The main reason I fell in love with this book was simply because of the story. The plot had a perfect blend of mystery, romance, dimension, and family drama. Within the novel there was also an underlying theme centered around men abusing women. The book both highlighted and brought awareness to this dilemma. Subsequently, there was a statistic at the beginning of each section, which illustrated different numbers of women abused and assaulted in Sweden. I found that these statistics made the violence by a man's hand feel real, rather than just a scene out of a story. Salander, who was abused a few times, eventually got her revenge, which was an interesting take and way to further illustrate this theme. It was empowering and I personally thought that the book sent a pro-women message.

I think that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one of the best books written in the past decade. I will give warning now, however, as certain parts of the novel were graphically intense. There were a handful of sexual assault/abuse scenes, which is why I would recommend the novel to a mature or adult audience. Although the writing itself was nothing spectacular, the story and plot development was breathtaking as the novel truly became the definition of a page-turner.