Harriet Vanger, scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
Wow! What a fascinating, disturbing story. Almost in the Agatha Christie vein, we are taken on an interesting ride with an amateur sleuth attempting to solve a crime that happened over 40 years ago. We even have the classic Agatha Christie closed room/train idea with all the suspects entrapped on an island and unable to escape due to a crash on the only bridge to the mainland.
Quite gruesome and disturbing in parts, the story was also uplifting as it showed how Lisbeth began to grow as a woman and person, overcoming her disability, in fact using this very disability to help solve the mystery. Ausperger's Syndrome is mentioned, and I'm sure that's what she suffered from.
Apparently, some of our club members had trouble 'getting in' to the book. I took this on board and read the first few pages very carefully and paid attention as to who was who. I was soon engrossed and had to be forced to put it down! I was so sorry to finish it, that I'm planning to read the next book in the series, "The Girl Who Played with Fire".
The original title for this book was "Män som hatar kvinnor" - "Men Who Hate Women". The illustration on the first run of books was pretty grim too. I much prefer the present title and illustration.
Megan
I've now finished the whole series and really enjoyed the stories. A lot of extraneous detail in the final book made it a bit of a task to plough through. Not being particularly interested in the political history of Sweden, I just skipped a lot of that.
ReplyDeleteWell worth the effort to read all three of these novels.
Lisbeth Salander is an extremely unusual heroine and I'm really sorry that I won't be able to read any more about her escapades.
I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the next. it held my interest and I was not sure who the killer was till the very last so that was good.Lisabeth is a very interesting character and very complicated.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like this book at all, was very hard to get into but I did finish it. I felt that the book could off been cut in half and still ended up with the same story line.
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