I have just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (originally called Män som hatar kvinnor or The Man who hated women).I found it a gripping, real roller-coaster of a thriller, and I admit that I used the fact that I had a cold to spend most of a windy Tuesday at home chasing the sun and reading the book. Translated from the Swedish, the hero is a journalist down on his luck, through no real fault of his own, who finds himself in a classic thriller situation – on an island, in the cold stormy north with a murder to solve and lots of dysfunctional suspects. From financial, big business skulduggery to unbelievably horrible serial murders with twisted Bible-reading Nazi (real and neo) nutcases and the odd sexual deviant (Jane, BE WARNED!),
the book flows easily through the antics of the likeable main character and the equally likeable, but more “troubled” heroine (she of the dragon tattoo who seems to bear no resemblance to the sultry cover girl). Lisbeth Salander, it appears is how the author (who sadly died of a heart attack at the age of 50 never to see the success of his novels) envisaged a grown up version of the Astrid Lingren character, Pippi Longstocking, might turn out.Best of all for me was the thoroughly satisfactory ending. The baddies all got thoroughly whipped, the murder was, after a fashion, solved, (oh sorry, but didn’t you think it would be? Just a matter of who done it?) and the goodies are poised for the next episode,
number two in the enticingly marketed Millennium Trilogy….
Stieg Larsson started working in the seventies as a graphic designer at TT, a multimedia news provider in Sweden, a job he kept for the following 22 years. He also worked on a private mapping of right-wing extremism in Sweden and in 1991, wrote a book on right-wing extremism (Extremhögern) which prompted a neo-nazi newspaper to publish an article in 1993 giving the images, addresses and telephone numbers of the author, with the question “should he be allowed to continue his work, or should something be done?".
Larsson, in the early 80s, worked as a Scandinavian correspondent for the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, and in 1995 he was the main force behind the founding of the similar Swedish magazine Expo. For two years, he combined the two full time jobs before he finally quit TT in 1997 to put all his effort into Expo. From 1999 to his death, he was the chief editor of the magazine.
Comment on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Quercus, 2005) from Caroline.
Woodland book no 2222, Terry.
My rating: 5.
