Review Tuesday: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

I finally got around to reading THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Yeah, I know, I'm a little late to the party with this one. The book's been around a while and not one but TWO movies have been based on it. I've been held up. About a dozen people ALL told me they'd let me borrow their copy when thy were done and NEVER DID! For shame!

A disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, teams up with a strange woman, Lisbeth Salander, to unravel a forty year old mystery.

Pretty much I just summed up 640 pages in that one sentence but don't take it the wrong way. The book if far more complex than that synopsis indicates. There are LAYERS of plots and crimes and right when you think you know where things are going, there's a new twist.

For a pretty long book it reads pretty easily and moves quickly, even for one who reads as slow as I tend to prefer. The writing is good. Character development is also good, and in this tome we're dealing with a cast of dozens, so Larsson had quite a job of it.

Entertaining while sometimes bordering on cringe-worthy. Worth reading if you like mysteries.

At the end of Dragon Tattoo they included an excerpt from the next book, The Girl Who Played with Fire. The chapter was so odd that it piqued my interest and I decided to continue with the series despite the neat and tidy ending at the end of Tattoo.

When Lisbeth Salander thinks she's sorted out her life and grown up, a name from her past comes up and threatens to destroy her whole world. 

The book starts off with such an odd prologue that it leaves you scratching your head. What was THAT about? The trap was sprung. You're drawn in. You MUST read and read voraciously and devour this book. 

Like with the first book in the series, the early chapters are establishing characters and back story so you have the foundations for the rest of the story. Once you get by the first hundred (or so) pages you are thrown into the roller coaster. You have the same cast of characters as in the previous book. Peripheral characters stepped up for bigger roles this time around. New characters were added to the fold and were set for their roles in the grand scheme. In fact, the author goes into so much back story that sometimes you are left wondering, "why did he tell us that?" Then you will have days and days of furiously reading and seeing to make no progress in this thick "brick" of a book, using the author's own words. Then you realize you're nearing the end, and guess what?

IT'S NOT AN ENDING!!!

The Girl Who Played with Fire doesn't really have an ending. It leads directly into book three:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Lisbeth Salander is being made the scapegoat for the events that occur in The Girl Who Played with Fire. All her friends have to rally around her to prevent her civil rights from being trampled by the Secret Service.

Right when you think that things can't possibly go any crazier, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest knocks you on your ear. The book starts off exactly where the previous one ended. I would think that the two together should've been one tome, but it would've been close to 1,500 pages that way. Certainly any book that size would discourage many readers, so I guess the plan was sound. 

From the beginning you get to observe a conspiracy from the government's secret service unfold. The villains got new faces. A court battle brews over national security versus the life and civil rights of Lisbeth Salander. 

Everything about this book is interesting. The detailed descriptions of the deeds everyone was up to. The way the law is handled in that country. The internal politics of a daily newspaper. A variety of diverse topics are all brought together and somehow linked in this third and final book in the series.  It's just compelling reading. Then, much like the first book, you have what feels like about a dozen endings before the true mind-blowing conclusion. 

Some great writing, but don't get involved if you can't commit to reading over 2,000 pages all together. You might get away with reading the first one, but the last two need to be read in order. All three are enjoyable and worth the time to read them.

An interesting thought about these books. Stieg Larsson wrote these books, turned them in to his publisher and then DIED. He never got to see the splash he would make on pop culture all around the world.