Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This is a terrific and terrifying tour-de-force in the vast plains of culture, mystery, and journalism. Larsson’s first novel in the Millennium Trilogy is a stunning tale of an age-old mystery and an investigation into the bowels of corruption and intrigue that permeate a wealthy Swedish family. I found the novel slow to get rolling. It takes such a considerable amount of time for the characters to move along that I’m reminded of how it feels to wake up in the morning: the long lethargic stretch, followed by a pause, and then a slow staggering out of the bedroom. I won’t spoil any details, except to say that financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist is convinced to take on a job by Henrik Vanger to ghostwrite his autobiography and solve the locked-room on an island mystery of the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger in the sixties. He is teamed up with the antisocial, problematic, and unquestionably brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo.

                                 

I don’t know how much time Larsson spent developing the central mystery that envelops the life of Henrik Vanger, an obsession that totally eclipses everything else, but it is an intriguing one and tasteful in its execution. For Henrik, Harriet is dead, even if her body was never recovered, nor the method of her death proven. The questions that remain for him are: who, why, and how? Those questions are dissected in the novel through the eyes of Mikael, and later through his partner, Lisbeth. It was a treat to watch Larsson handle his characters, shaping them into realistic and distinct persons.

Larsson’s attention to detail is superb, the trait any mystery or thriller author requires. Needless to say, I was impressed by the level of detail and analysis that went into the investigation part of Harriet’s disappearance.

Like I said before, this book is somewhat slow. That is probably my only grievance, but it isn’t much of one at all. During my first read-through, it seemed to take countless pages before any real tension; any drama began to seep through the pages. In fact, Lisbeth and Mikael are on two wildly different and completely disconnected paths until quite late into the novel when Lisbeth helps tackle his case. The author also spends a lot of time giving exposition to relevant history and to a host of terminology and processes in the financial world and technology.

Though Larsson takes his time to build up the story, the suspense is gripping in the latter half of the novel. Larsson indeed breathes a potent vibrancy into his writing. Translated into English from Swedish, the prose retains some non-americanisms that ring in the ear. Just from reading aloud the dialogue and the supporting texts, the prose is decidedly euro-centric and quite refreshing. Most of the novels I’ve consumed are North American or English, and though I’m quite new to the game of Scandinavian thrillers, I have to say I like what I’ve read so far.