Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The first of a trilogy (Millennium), Swedish author and journalist Larsson’s debut thriller succeeds on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin.

First off, it’s an absolute page-turner. But the characters are so fascinating and the clear, understated writing so graceful, you are going to want to savor it. A dilemma.

The plot is complex, involving corrosive family secrets, gruesome serial killings, business chicanery on a grand scale, journalistic ethics and government paternalism. All of it seamlessly interwoven through the characters of the two protagonists.

As the book opens Mikael Blomqvist, an investigative business journalist and co-owner of the business magazine “Millennium,” has just been convicted of libeling powerful financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, sentenced to a few months jail time and fined a crippling sum. His struggling magazine has lost its credibility and Blomqvist will likely lose his lovely apartment as well as his livelihood.

Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander, a fierce, tiny, anorexic-looking, punk-dressing, tattooed genius investigator whose ferocious independence belies her fragile appearance, has just completed a report on Blomqvist for the security firm that employs her. She’s filleted his life - ethics, sex life, finances, prospects – and delivered a suspicion of her own on the libel case.

The report goes to childless Henrik Vanger, wealthy patriarch of an insular, squabbling family dynasty, a decayed giant in steel, mining, textiles and more. Henrik wants to hire Blomqvist to write the Vanger family history – a tale rife with Nazis, batterers and drunks - as a pretext to investigating the disappearance of his beloved niece Harriet in 1966 at age 16.

It’s a “locked island” mystery. The Hedeby Island family compound in the remote north of Sweden connects to the mainland by one bridge. It was blocked by an accident. All boats were accounted for. Which leaves about 40 suspects, most of them family, most of them cleared or deceased. But each year on his birthday Vanger receives a pressed flower – a taunting, macabre reminder of the pressed flowers Harriet used to give him. The murderer – Vanger is convinced she has been murdered – is still alive.

So why does Blomqvist take this hopeless case? The money and quiet isolation are attractive but Vanger sweetens the deal by promising to deliver incontrovertible proof of Wennerstrom’s criminality.

Blomqvist, shocked by the intense cold and meager winter light of Hedeby, moves into a guesthouse and begins to meet the family. He falls into a dalliance with one of Harriet’s contemporaries, daughter of the last Vanger Nazi, a 90-plus recluse who still lives on the island, sidesteps Harriet’s ancient viper of a mother – her father died in a drunken accident the year before Harriet disappeared – and has a congenial dinner with Martin Vanger, current CEO of the Vanger companies and Harriet’s brother.

Meanwhile, Salander needs all her considerable skills to reclaim her life from an abusive state-appointed guardian. The narrative swings between Blomqvist and Salander and while the Blomqvist part is absorbing and intricate, the Salander part is violent, scary, and sharply humorous.

Eventually Blomqvist makes an unexpected breakthrough and needs a researcher. Who better than the person who put together such an expert dossier on him? And here the book really comes together. Apart, Blomqvist and Salander are fine individuals, quite capable of engaging our attention (well, Salander is electrifying), together they are fascinating.

Blomqvist’s perceptiveness blooms and Salander’s edgy brilliance shines. Where others are baffled by Salander or tend to underestimate her, Blomqvist recognizes Aspergers and spots talents that Salander has kept secret all her life. As Salander lets some of her defenses fall, a partnership develops that allows leaps of deduction and intuition, working up to a nail-biting conclusion and a denouement that kick-starts a new set of problems – to be faced in the second book, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” which, sadly, will not be available until next year.

More sadly, Larsson did not live to see the success of his trilogy – which is already a bestseller in non-English speaking Europe. (Why the English translations are being published so much later than German, French, Norwegian, Italian, etc. is a mystery). An anti-right-wing activist and journalist (perhaps a bit like Blomqvist), he died in 2004 of a heart attack at age 50, just after delivering all three manuscripts.

With its Swedish sensibilities, northern atmosphere (especially in below frigid winter), and riveting characters, this book is for anyone who has ever read a crime story.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Lynn Harnett

Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo