The girl with the dragon tattoo

Review by New York Times Review

A journalist, a hacker and a 40-year-old cold case. A FEW years ago, Ake Daun, a professor of European ethnology, posted an article on Sweden's official national Web site, Sweden.se, arguing that Swedes are not in fact gloomy or suicide prone. "Sweden is quite far down in the European suicide table, in 15th place," Daun wrote, blaming a 1960 speech by Dwight Eisenhower for leaving outsiders with the impression that Swedes tended toward "sin, nudity, drunkenness and suicide." Maybe so. But "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish journalist who died of a heart attack in 2004, won't help the country's image any. The novel offers a thoroughly ugly view of human nature, especially when it comes to the way Swedish men treat Swedish women. In Larsson's world, sadism, murder and suicide are commonplace - as is lots of casual sex. (Sweden isn't all bad.) "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," published in Sweden in 2005, became an international best seller. The book opens with an intriguing mystery. Henrik Vanger, an octogenarian industrialist, hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just lost a libel case under murky circumstances, to investigate the disappearance of his great-niece, Harriet. Nearly 40 years earlier, Harriet vanished from a small island mostly owned by the Vanger family, and Henrik has never gotten over it. Blomkvist takes on the case, despite serious misgivings, after Henrik promises him 2.4 million kroner (about $372,000 at the current exchange rate) for a year's work. Henrik says he's certain that someone in his family murdered Harriet. "I detest most of the members of my family," he tells Blomkvist. "They are for the most part thieves, misers, bullies and incompetents" - a description that will prove to be, if anything, too kind. The girl of the title isn't Harriet but Lisbeth Salander, a 24-yearold computer hacker with a photographic memory, a violent temper and some serious intimacy issues. After a nasty plot detour involving a lawyer foolish enough to try to take advantage of her, Salander teams with Blomkvist to solve the mystery of Harriet's disappearance. The novel perks up as their investigation gains speed, though readers will need some time to sort through the various cousins and nephews and half-brothers and -sisters who populate the Vanger family. Harriet's case turns out to be connected to a series of murders in the 1950s and '60s. When a cat is killed and its tortured corpse is left outside the cottage where Blomkvist is living, he and Salander realize they may not be working on a cold case after all. BUT if the middle section of "Girl" is a treat, the rest of the novel doesn't quite measure up. The book's original Swedish title was "Men Who Hate Women," a label that just about captures the subtlety of the novel's sexual politics. Except for Blomkvist, nearly every man in the book under age 70 is a violent misogynist. Nor will "Girl" win any awards for characterization. While Blomkvist comes to life as he's investigating the murder, his relationships with his daughter and with Erika Berger, a co-worker who is his occasional lover, seem halfformed and weak. Even after 460 pages, it's not clear whether Blomkvist cares, whether he's troubled by his lack of intimacy or simply resigned to it. Is he stoic or merely Swedish? Either way, he seems more a stock character than a real person. But the real disappointment in "Girl" comes in its final section, after the mystery of Harriet's disappearance has been solved. Without any warning, "Girl" metamorphoses into a boring account of Blomkvist's effort to take down the executive who originally won the libel lawsuit mentioned at the start of the novel. The story of his revenge is boring and implausible, relying heavily on lazy e-mail exchanges between characters. And so "Girl" ends blandly. Only Ake Daun and the Swedish tourist board can be happy about that. Alex Berenson is a reporter for The Times. His most recent novel is "The Ghost War."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

The first U.S. appearance of another major Swedish crime writer is cause for celebration but also disappointment: Larsson, an acclaimed journalist as well as the author of the award-winning Millenium trilogy, of which this is the first volume, died in 2004. The editor of a magazine called Expo, which was dedicated to fighting right-wing extremism, Larsson brings his journalistic background to bear in his first novel. It is the story of a crusading reporter, Mikail Blomkvist, who has been convicted of libel for his exposé of crooked financier Wennerstrom. Then another Swedish financier, a rival of Wennerstrom, wants to hire Blomkvist to solve the decades-old disappearance of his niece from the family's island compound in the north of Sweden. If Blomkvist works on the project for a year, his employer will deliver the goods on Wennerstrom. Blomkvist takes the job and soon finds himself trying to unlock the grisly multigenerational secrets in a hideously dysfunctional family's many closets. Helping him dig through those closets is the novel's real star, the girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, a ward of the state who happens to be Sweden's most formidable computer hacker and a fearless foe of women-hating men. Larsson has two great stories (and two star-worthy characters) here, and if he never quite brings them together the conclusion of the Wennerstrom campaign seems almost anticlimactic after the action-filled finale on the island the novel nevertheless offers compelling chunks of investigative journalism, high-tech sleuthing, and psychosexual drama. What a shame that we only have three books in which to watch the charismatic Lisbeth Salander take on the world!--Ott, Bill Copyright 2008 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Starred Review. Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption--at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy. 100,000 first printing. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Wealthy young Harriet Vanger disappeared 40 years ago, and Uncle Henrik always thought she was murdered. Now he's drafted a hotshot journalist and a tattooed hacker to investigate. An expert on right-wing extremists, Swedish author Larsson died in 2004. This international best seller arrives here with a 100,000-copy first printing. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

First U.S. publication for a deceased Swedish author (1954-2004); this first of his three novels, a bestseller in Europe, is a labored mystery. It's late 2002. Mikael Blomkvist, reputable Stockholm financial journalist, has just lost a libel case brought by a notoriously devious tycoon. He's looking at a short jail term and the ruin of his magazine, which he owns with his best friend and occasional lover, Erika Berger. The case has brought him to the attention of Henrik Vanger, octogenarian, retired industrialist and head of the vast Vanger clan. Henrik has had a report on him prepared by Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous Girl, a freaky private investigator. The 24-year-old Lisbeth is a brilliant sleuth, and no wonder: She's the best computer hacker in Sweden. Henrik hires Mikael to solve an old mystery, the disappearance of his great-niece Harriet, in 1966. Henrik is sure she was murdered; every year the putative killer tauntingly sends him a pressed flower on his birthday (Harriet's custom). He is equally sure one of the Vangers is the murderer. They're a nasty bunch, Nazis and ne'er-do-wells. There are three story lines here: The future of the magazine, Lisbeth's travails (she has a sexually abusive guardian) and, most important, the Harriet mystery. This means an inordinately long setup. Only at the halfway point is there a small tug of excitement as Mikael breaks the case and enlists Lisbeth's help. The horrors are legion: Rape, incest, torture and serial killings continuing into the present. Mikael is confronted by an excruciating journalistic dilemma, resolved far too swiftly as we return to the magazine and the effort to get the evil tycoon, a major miscalculation on Larsson's part. The tycoon's empire has nothing to do with the theme of violence against women which has linked Lisbeth's story to the Vanger case, and the last 50 pages are inevitably anticlimactic. Juicy melodrama obscured by the intricacies of problem-solving. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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A Friday in November It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day-which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call. "It arrived." "What is it this year?" "I don't know what kind it is. I'll have to get someone to tell me what it is. It's white." "No letter, I suppose." "Just the flower. The frame is the same kind as last year. One of those do-it-yourself ones." "Postmark?" "Stockholm." "Handwriting?" "Same as always, all in capitals. Upright, neat lettering." With that, the subject was exhausted, and not another word was exchanged for almost a minute. The retired policeman leaned back in his kitchen chair and drew on his pipe. He knew he was no longer expected to come up with a pithy comment or any sharp question which would shed a new light on the case. Those days had long since passed, and the exchange between the two men seemed like a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-one else in the whole world had the least interest in unravelling. The Latin name was Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) rubinette . It was a plant about ten centimetres high with small, heather-like foliage and a white flower with five petals about two centimetres across. The plant was native to the Australian bush and uplands, where it was to be found among tussocks of grass. There it was called Desert Snow. Someone at the botanical gardens in Uppsala would later confirm that it was a plant seldom cultivated in Sweden. The botanist wrote in her report that it was related to the tea tree and that it was sometimes confused with its more common cousin Leptospermum scoparium, which grew in abundance in New Zealand. What distinguished them, she pointed out, was that rubinette had a small number of microscopic pink dots at the tips of the petals, giving the flower a faint pinkish tinge. Rubinette was altogether an unpretentious flower. It had no known medicinal properties, and it could not induce hallucinatory experiences. It was neither edible, nor had a use in the manufacture of plant dyes. On the other hand, the aboriginal people of Australia regarded as sacred the region and the flora around Ayers Rock. The botanist said that she herself had never seen one before, but after consulting her colleagues she was to report that attempts had been made to introduce the plant at a nursery in Göteborg, and that it might, of course, be cultivated by amateur botanists. It was difficult to grow in Sweden because it thrived in a dry climate and had to remain indoors half of the year. It would not thrive in calcareous soil and it had to be watered from below. It needed pampering. The fact of its being so rare a flower ought to have made it easier to trace the source of this particular specimen, but in practice it was an impossible task. There was no registry to look it up in, no licences to explore. Anywhere from a handful to a few hundred enthusiasts could have had access to seeds or plants. And those could have changed hands between friends or been bought by mail order from anywhere in Europe, anywhere in the Antipodes. But it was only one in the series of mystifying flowers that each year arrived by post on the first day of November. They were always beautiful and for the most part rare flowers, always pressed, mounted on watercolour paper in a simple frame measuring 15cm by 28cm. Excerpted from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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