The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Summary (from the publisher): A sensation across Europe—millions of copies sold. A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves. It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.

Review: I don't have much to contribute concerning this book that you probably haven't already seen/read. A decent murder mystery with a hell of a lot of detail thrown in by Larsson. I will say that Lisbeth Salander has some serious balls; what a bamf. I felt that it was really obvious it was a translation, particularly in the first 100 pages or so, but it seemed to become more smooth as the novel progressed. However, the books that become bestsellers continue to astound me. This was good but if I didn't already know it was wildly popular, I would never have suspected that it had sold 15 million copies in print books alone. Such a pity that Larsson died before seeing what a hit his novels are.

Stars: 4