In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist recently convicted of libel, partners with a ward of the state, Lisbeth, to find out what happened to the niece of one of Sweden’s richest families. What seems like an impossible case takes many twists and turns as Mikael and Lisbeth grow closer to each other and the truth during their investigation.

The first half of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was very boring. The book is bogged down in detail as Larsson describes the details of the court case that lands Blomkvist with a conviction of libel. Blomkvist owns a magazine whose specialty is corporate corruption, while I was very interested when the Enron case came out, I was not all that interested in a fictional case that seemed to have little to do with the details on the back cover (a missing person case).

Secondly, a character described as punk, an orphan of the state, extremely petite, a rebel and a hacker should have been very interesting. Well, Lisbeth was interesting, but the book concentrated so much on what was going on with Blomkvist that Lisbeth’s character seemed to disappear in the novel. Every time that the book came back to Lisbeth, I was intrigued, then it would divert back to Blomkvist and I would rush to get through it.

All this boringness made me wonder what all the fuss was about, then I got about half-way through the book and a shocking twist took this book to a whole new level. Granted the twist had little to do with the missing case, but I did not see it coming (and I’m usually pretty good as seeing things coming). Then after the grotesque scene with Lisbeth, I figured all bets were off for this novel.

When the book finally got Blomkvist and Salandar together and doing what they were suppose to be doing (investigating), the book definitely became a page turner and I was hooked. I wanted and needed to know what happened to the young girl that disappeared thirty years ago. However, there were so many aspects to the book that I had to overlook that it is hard for me to say that I loved this book.

First, Blomkvist is suppose to be really hot.  I don’t get it. Nothing in his description or physical character made me think that this was the kind of guy who got around. Yet, there he was sleeping with all these ladies and most of these ladies were the instigators of the sex. I found it really distracting because I couldn’t get my head around why it was in the novel.

Second, there is the case itself. There are so many characters to the case that I found myself with a headache trying to keep them all figured out. Thank the Lord that there was a family tree in the beginning of the book, otherwise, I would have given up on trying to keep all the characters straight.

To tote this novel as a smart, fascinating thriller is accurate. No detail is missed and there really aren’t many stories out there like it. For me, the coldness of the characters matched with the bizarre setting left me wondering what the heck was going on and not all that curious about the second book. I kept reading because I wanted to know what happens to Lisbeth, but I didn’t get a lot of answers which makes me think that I never really am. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is definitely a book for a specific audience; I just wasn’t one of them.

Side Note: What actually made me buy this book was the passing of the author, Steig Larsson. At the time of his death, he had written out three novels of the Lisbeth Salander Series (aka The Millennium Legacy). The series had intended to be ten books, but Larsson was only half way through the fourth when he passed away. There is a bit of a controversy with his descendants as to what to with the fourth book and no one can seem to agree. Real life controversy hooked me in and I wondered what all the fuss was about.

Book Source: Purchased from Amazon.com

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