Friday, October 31, 2008

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Knopf (September 16, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307269752
ISBN-13: 978-0307269751

(Note: Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004, shortly after delivering The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to his publisher.)

Lisabeth Salander may look like a 13 year old goth princess, but she is great at undercover detective work and snooping out indepth histories of the people she is assigned to investigate. Mikael Blomkvist is a financial journalist who has just been convicted of libeling a wealthy financial backer. And Henrik Vanger is an 82 year old, semi-retired financial head of a large family owned business. These three people are drawn together to try and solve the mystery of 35+ year old murder.

Underlying themes in this book are not for the faint of heart: racism, sexual violence and financial collapse on the world market - sound like themes that are recently in the news?

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an international crime thriller with memorable characters and and an interesting take on financial issues. It was a book I truly couldn't put down. The mystery kept me guessing until the every end. Just when I thought I knew where the story was going, Larsson took off in a different direction. The book is narrated in the voices of the three main characters: Mikael, Lisabeth, and Henrik

I was truly saddened after reading this book, knowing that a powerful new writing voice is no longer among us. However, Larsson did deliver two more manuscripts to his publisher, so we have those two books to look forward to. This book has been translated from the original Swedish manuscript.

5 comments:

~willow~ said...

this is on my to-read list already, but methinks upon reading your review that I will actually place a hold for it (i *love* the library!!). Didn't know the author passed away, how tragic :(

Lynda said...

this is on my to read list too ..thanks for the review ;0)

Anonymous said...

howz the book? is it worth a try??

Anonymous said...

I keep seeing people reading this lately on trains and airports etc. It's not something I would usually pick up, but I am tempted I must say.

Oh and check out my blog for the Manga Challenge in 2009.

Kate S. said...

Great review! I just finished reading the book and was totally riveted by it as well.