The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Paperback, Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland

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.

Other versions

Customer Reviews

4.0 average for 1780 customer reviews

Mildly entertaining

It took me awhile to get through this book. There is too much back story, too many Swedish names that I kept getting confused and too many characters. Also, the characters are simply not that likeable. I am not going to read the next books in the series because I don't care what happens to them! As I was reading I kept thinking "ok, one more chapter and it is all going to start pulling together." It did get more interesting about half way through but I like a book that you can't put down and this one wasn't it for me.

grz - St. Louis, MO United States

BO-ring

I could barely get through the first chapter... it took me 3 days of plodding through it. After reading the first few words of the second chapter, I decided not to waste my time.

L. Woods - Austin, TX United States

Great Suprise...............

A friend recommended this book to me. I was hesitant at first because it was a Swedish writer. I am so glad I read it anyway. I found at the beginning it was a little hard to read for several reasons, the writing style was a little different, not familiar with the places being described, a lot of little facts and background information included. It got a lot easier to read once I got into it. This one I was up very late into the night reading. I loved it and thought what a great cast of characters, Blomkvist, Salander (my favorite), the vanger family.....was a great book and quickly became an easy read !!

DMWC - omaha,ne

Dragon Tattoo Rocks

Stieg Larsson is really onto something with the Millennium Series. Best read in years. Terrific characters and plotlines...

Roslyn J. Fleischer - Santa Monica, CA

Caffeine, the Real Swedish Mystery ...

Who knew that Swedes loved coffee so much? If we are to believe Stieg Larsson's narrative in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," then Swedes enjoy coffee around the clock ... be it 3 pm or 4 am, they're knocking back a cup of joe and inviting others to join them in over caffeinated bliss. Which, you know, to each their own, it just seems like coffee was the central plot of the book rather than any overarching, suspense filled murder mystery.

I'm usually not one for the mystery or political thriller genre, but I was waiting for several hours in Boston's South Station and decided to purchase it. The glaring neon book jacket was calling to me at the bookstand and I had recently read about the casting show-down as to who would play Lisbeth Salander in the US film adaptation of the book. Would it be Natalie Portman? Emma Watson? Carey Mulligan? I believe the part has now been awarded to an actress named Rooney Mara.

I didn't hate this book but I didn't love it either. Not to regurgitate too many other reviews, but the character of Mikael Blomkvist was definitely hollow. I'm sorry, why do all these women immediately fall in love with him? He doesn't seem to have very many redeeming qualities unless you consider: adultery, narcissism, and bad parenting to be redeeming. He also describes his time spent in jail as something of a holiday. Huh. Interesting. Note to self: if going to do jail time, do it in Sweden.

Larsson spends a lot of time and page space going into excruciating detail about things that really make no difference to the story (ie: what type of equipment someone is using, what its made out of, how much it costs, how heavy it was; what exactly is on someone's sandwich ... never forgetting the coffee of course). These details would be fine if they served to expand the reader's knowledge and understanding of the character, but they don't. I felt like half the narrative was consumed with minute details, cataloguing things that I didn't care about and which added nothing to my experience of the book.

Lisbeth Salander was slightly less hollow and more interesting than Blomkvist. She seemed to be capable of real emotions exhibited through (oh my god!) a reaction that was more than just [shrug] "ok." I felt like the mystery of the book was more about her and what kind of character she was rather than anything Blomkvist was fiddling around with in the hinterlands of the Swedish countryside. That being said, there were moments when I was drawn in to the mystery of the missing girl, Harriet Vanger, but I found the conclusion of that part of the story to be far-fetched and implausible.

I really didn't care about the sub-plot involving Blomkvist and Wennerstrom ... something that is also tied up a little too neatly by the end of the book.

Again, I didn't hate it and found it to be an okay airport/train station/beach read/vacation read. Maybe it was the translation but it felt clunky to me and it lacked substance. Too much telling and not enough showing.

J. S. Altman - Arlington, VA

Find it at Amazon.com

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Other versions

Related items

Customer Reviews

Mildly entertaining

BO-ring

Great Suprise...............

Dragon Tattoo Rocks

Caffeine, the Real Swedish Mystery ...

Subjects

Books

Video

Music

Video Games

Apparel

Automotive

Home & Garden

Electronics

Computers

Software

Sporting Goods

Tools

Toys