The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: A Lisbeth Salander Novel

Stieg Larsson

Sep 2008 · Millennium Series Book 1 · Sold by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

About this ebook

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The thrilling first book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series featuring Lisbeth Salander: “Combine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer thriller, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larsson’s first novel” (The New York Times). • Also known as the Millennium series
 
Harriet Vanger, a 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.
 
Look for the latest book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, The Girl in the Eagle's Talons!

Ratings and reviews

"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is one of the most praised novels in recent times. It lived up to its billings and gave me a totally enjoyable reading experience. Mikael Blomkvist has lost a liable suit against Hans-Eric Wennerstrom and is facing prison. Before he begins his sentence, he is contacted by a wealthy man and offered a job and a chance to clear his name. To do this, he must promise to spend a year writing the history of the Vanger family and to research what happened when Harriet Vanger disappeared. Harriet is the granddaughter of Henrik Vanger's brother and she vanished over forty years ago. What makes her disappearance more perplexing is that she was living on Hedeby Island. At that time there were only about sixty people living on the Island. Many of the inhabitants were of the Vanger family, including her brother< Martin, who is now in charge of the Vanger business. While conducting his investigation, Mikael lives on the Island at the guest cottage. He makes contact with most of the Vanger family members and eventually hires Lisbeth Salander as his research assistant. She is the girl with the dragon tattoo. Lisbeth is a twenty-four-year old hacker and is a person with amazing common sense, perception and possesses a photographic memory. Her intelligence was misunderstood and she was classified as mentally incompetent. As the story begins, she is under the legal protection of an attorney who tries to gain sexual favors from Lisbeth by holding back money she is entitled to. Salender is one of the most memorable characters I have had the pleasure of encountering on the literary page. She seems like a teen rebel with her piercings, tattoos and quick wit but is as smart and relentless as can be. The author died just after bringing the manuscript to the editors. He never saw the huge popularity that this novel has gained, nor did he see the critical acclaim. To date, this novel has won or been nominated for the following awards: Booker Award Winner Strand Critics Award nonimee - Best First Novel Macavity Award 2009 - Best First Novel ITV Crime Thriller Award 2008 for International Author of the Year Barry Award - Best British Crime Novel Anthony Award nominee for Best Novel of '09 and for Best First Novel.

Excellent read. Intriguing sense of place, Stockholm and surrounding countryside, characters we want to understand and 2 puzzles. What happened to 16 year old Harriet Vanger who disappeared more than 40 years ago. How did corporate financier Wennerstrom set up financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist? Mikael is a likeable protagonist. I suspect he is the author's alter ego and wonder if Larsson was as sexually successful as he makes his character. In all he has 3 sexual affairs during the course of the novel. The uncompicated sexual relationship of editor Erika Berger and Mikael is wishful thinking. Lisabeth's (the girl of the title) prowess with computers and research is gradually explained by a diagnosis of Asperger's. It fits. The Evil that happened to her is never revealed, nor is the mentally ill mother elaborated. Lisabeth has a sister. Perhaps she will appear in a sequel. There are hints that something traumatic happened in her youth. She has 2 piercings and several tattoos. She adds another tatoo after a painfully prolonged rape. I liked the role that photographs, simple snapshots, play in this plot. It is a nice low tech and believable technique for puzzle solving. As with most mysteries the ending is a bit forced. We are asked to believe that a sadistic serial killer when confronted by a skinny golf club wielding girl would flee the scene of his crimes and commit scuicide. I think not. Although the pleasures of this particular novel will permit me to allow it. Wennerstrom's trap is set by Lisabeth and her computer hacker cohorts. Is it possible? I'm not geeky enough to know so I believe it and enjoy it while fearing for the sanctity of my own files.

Read this in January 2011, it having been gently forced on me by my mother over Christmas. Was resistant at first, since the last book she told me I HAD TO READ was Dan Bogblasthiseyes Brown. Luckily, I was struck down with a New Year's cold, so my prejudice was compromised and I settled down with a hot toddy and a psychotic Swedish hax0r. The style is a bit clunky, especially in this first volume (I hear it's fashionable to blame the translator for that), but the story rattles along at a fair old pace. The hype is hardly justified, and Salander certainly isn't the unique creation she's been hailed as, but I enjoyed the ride, and went on and ripped through the other two in a couple of days of sniffling and self-pity.

About the author

STEIG LARSSON, who lived in Sweden, was the editor in chief of the magazine Expo and a leading expert on antidemocratic, right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations. He died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.