The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was a total surprise. I picked it up as a freebie (pre-release copy) at a "book club bash" at our local bookstore (http://www.auntiesbooks.com). It sat on my shelf until April of 2009, when we were headed to Sweden (and Iceland) for a couple of weeks. Since the author was Swedish, I thought "how appropriate!". So I started reading it on the plane and simply ATE IT UP! It's an interesting tale, told in an interesting way. The girl of the title is a computer whiz/hacker, and very anti-social (for reasons we learn later). She gets involved in doing some work for a magazine editor, and we end up with a variation of the locked room mystery. But there's WAY more here than a simple mystery. This book is the first of a trilogy, which in Sweden is called "Men who hate women". While being a very entertaining read, we also see a lot of the violence and repression that men can perpetrate on women, even in a supposedly 'egalitarian' society of Sweden. But it's never preachy. It's just a great, great read, with some of the most interesting characters I've met in a book. Fortunately, when I got to Sweden, the sequel was out (in English). Needless to say, I snatched it up, and read it on the way back! (I'm now waiting desperately for the 3rd book to be released here in the US) Anyway, this has become one of my favorite books/series. I'm just sorry that the author has passed away before he could write more.

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