The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson has gotten a great deal of positive feedback from critics, as the author’s debut novel. It was also named Crime Thriller of the Year 2009 by the British Book Awards.
Upon reading the first the few chapters, I was not impressed. A few of the characters were intriguing but story was slow and there wasn’t any action to speak of, just page after page of back story. About a quarter of the way through the book that all changed and I was very glad I had taken the time to get to know these characters and learn about their lives.
The story centers around a journalist with some very bad luck, Mikael Blomkvist, who allows himself, his career and his business to become close to ruin at the hands of a powerful businessman with some shady business practices. In parallel the story develops around Lisbeth Salander, a quite troubled young girl who has a knack for her job at investigating people’s backgrounds while balancing a personal life that, put mildly, appears eccentric. As the stories entwine and the suspense builds and you slowly learn more about the numerous personalities scattered throughout the novel and cannot wait to find out what will happen to each.
The climax appears when you are not expecting it and is quite surprising. This leaves the end of the book for many additional resolutions to come to light and slowly the story tapers off, as opposed to the standard thriller novel that reaches its apex and ends within a page or two. Stieg Larsson includes an excellent ending which makes it difficult to not immediately pick up the next installment in the three part series, The Girl Who Played with Fire. I highly recommend picking up at least The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, if not the whole series.
