Customer Reviews

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Mass Market Paperback) Import

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1 star:		(410)

 

 

A 24-year-old computer hacker sporting an assortment of tattoos and body piercings and afflicted with Asperger Syndrome or something of the like has been under state guardianship in her native Sweden since she was thirteen. She supports herself by doing deep background investigations for Dragan Armansky, who, in turn, worries the anorexic-looking Lisbeth Salander is "the perfect victim for anyone who wished her ill." Salander may look fourteen and stubbornly shun social norms, but she possesses the inner strength of a determined survivor. She sees more than her word processor page in black and white and despises the users and abusers of this world. She won't hesitate to exact her own unique brand of retribution against small-potatoes bullies, sick predators, and corrupt magnates alike.

Financial journalist Carl Mikael Blomkvist has just been convicted of libeling a financier and is facing a fine and three months in jail. Blomkvist, after a Salander-completed background check, is summoned to a meeting with semi-retired industrialist Henrik Vanger whose far-flung but shrinking corporate empire is wholly family owned. Vanger has brooded for 36 years about the fate of his great niece, Harriet. Blomkvist is expected to live for a year on the island where many Vanger family members still reside and where Harriet was last seen. Under the cover story that he is writing a family history, Blomkvist is to investigate which family member might have done away with the teenager.

So, the stage is set. The reader easily guesses early that somehow Blomkvist and Salander will pool their talents to probe the Vanger mystery. However,Swede Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is no humdrum, formulaic whodunit. It is fascinating and very difficult to put down. Nor is it without some really suspenseful and chillingly ugly scenes....

The issue most saturating The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that of shocking sexual violence primarily against women but not excluding men. Salander and Blomkvist both confront prima facie evidence of such crimes. Larsson's other major constituent elements are corporate malfeasance that threatens complete collapse of stock markets and anarchistic distrust of officialdom to the point of endorsing (at least, almost) vigilantism. He also deals with racism as he spins a complex web from strands of real and imagined history concerning mid-twentieth century Vanger affiliations with Sweden's fascist groups.

But Larsson's carefully calibrated tale is more than a grisly, cynical world view of his country and the modern world at large. At its core, it is an fascinating character study of a young woman who easily masters computer code but for whom human interaction is almost always more trouble than it is worth, of an investigative reporter who chooses a path of less resistance than Salander but whose humanity reaches out to many including her, and of peripheral characters -- such as Armansky -- who need more of their story told.

Fortunately, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in English translation will be followed by two more in the Millennium series: The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Air Castle that Blew Up. I can't wait. Larsson also made a 200-page start on a fourth book, but sadly he succumbed to a heart attack in 2004 and his father decided the unfinished work will remain unpublished.

I recommend this international bestseller to all who eagerly sift new books for challenging intellectual crime thrillers, who luxuriate in immersing themselves in the ambience of a compellingly created world and memorable characters, who soak up financial and investigative minutiae as well as computer hacking tidbits, and who want to share Larsson's crusade against violence and racism.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a masterwork of fine craftsmanhip. When I reached the final page I was disappointed that there was no more to read. I did not want the story to end. The characters are too intriguing for this to be the end. Apparently this was the first novel in a trilogy by the brillant writer, Stieg Larsson, who unfortunately died in 2004: the book contains a tribute to him and his career. I cannot wait to read the sequels scheduled for release in the USA in 2009.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an international best seller and is set in Sweden. It takes a little effort to get accustomed to all the Swedish names and places but then the story moves with lightening speed. There are two key plots happening simultaneously. In one, a Swedish financial investigative journalist publishes a libelous attack about a powerful industrialist and is sentenced to jail, fined a ruinous sum, and has his career torn to shreds. Another industrialist, Vanger, hires the journalist to investigate the 36 year old disappearnace of his then 14 year old grand niece. There has been no trace of her in all these years and she is assumed dead. Yet, every year on his birthday, he receives a mysterious gift of a pressed flower, mimicking a gift his missing grandniece used to give him when she lived there. Vanger, an old man, is tormented by the flower gifts, and wants one more chance to find out what happened to her and who killed her. What the journalist uncovers about the Vanger family's hitherto unknown secrets and connections to the Nazis, will have you hanging on the edge of your seat.

The book is titled after yet another character, Lisabeth Salander, a societal outcast and social ward of the State, uncivilized without any desire to obey societal norms, and replete with piercings, tattoos, and a goth/biker appearance. In short, at first glance a totally undesirable and unsympathetic person. She is a researcher with a corporate security firm and ends up working with the journalist. In truth, she is a survivor of abuse in all forms with low self esteem, and an inablity to trust. She is a genius with Asberger's Syndrome, a form of autism, who sees patterns in things ordinary mortals miss and uses incredible computer hacking skills to accomplish her goals. She is fascinating: ruthless and tough to a fault, yet internally vulnerable, struggling to comprehend her own feelings. She has an appeal that draws you to her, rooting for her, and wanting to understand her. Lisabeth is unforgettable, unlike most characters that populate mystery thrillers. There is such depth here.

The book is a thriller on many levels: The story about the Vanger family itself, the journalist's crusade to redeem his reputation, Lisabeth's vendettas and development, and of course, the truth about what actually happened to the missing Vanger heiresss. This is a superb novel and impossible to put down. Utterly stunning. Probably the year's best book. SUMMER 2009: SEE MY REVIEW OF THE SEQUEL, "THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE", ANOTHER OUTSTANDING BOOK.

I keep trying to figure out *how* this Swedish crime novel became an international bestseller. Yes, the decades-old case of the missing niece prodded me to reach the final page, though not with bated breath. Yes, Lisbeth Salander (young, tattooed, socially challenged, incompetent-per-the-State hacker) makes a readable heroine; too bad she's given fewer pages than the alleged hero. But other than the mystery subplot and Salander herself, almost every element of this work falls short, astonishingly so given the multitude of five-star reviews.

Within these too numerous (465) pages, you'll find flat, artless prose; rampant description (rooms, every article of furniture therein, multiple walk-throughs of characters' daily routines); and clinical interior monologue. You'll be treated to graphic scenes of sexual assault (realism in fiction is one thing; gratuitous detail is another). You'll meet a main character (Mikael Blomkvist) defined by extreme passivity, unfettered libido, and frequent cluelessness. You'll wade through endless exposition on the Vanger family history. You'll probably find yourself interested in one or more of the plot threads, yet continually frustrated at their fragmented presentation.

I agree with other reviewers that the book should have retained its Swedish title (MEN WHO HATE WOMEN). This better fits the social commentary Larsson clearly intended; it better warns of the disturbing sexual themes; and it doesn't falsely promise us much page time with Salander, the only sympathetic character in the book. However, even with a more accurate title, this novel's runaway success would confound me. I guess it was brilliantly marketed.

Henrik Vanger, an elderly Swedish industrialist, has long been receiving the same anonymous gift on his birthday: a single framed flower. He is convinced the series of flowers has something to do with his great-niece Harriet who vanished decades ago in mysterious circumstances when she was just 16.

Vanger coerces a disgraced and prison-bound journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, to do some research into the disappearance. In exchange for information on his niece, Vanger promises Blomkvist enough dirt to take down the rich man who is sending him to jail.

So begins "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," a blockbuster best-seller in Europe. As Blomkvist moves closer to the truth, he teams up with the titular character, a tattooed detective named Lisbeth Salander who's the real star of the show. Together they uncover things that stun even Blomkvist, a crusading financial reporter who thought he knew all there was to know about the rot of corruption, the myriad abuses of power and the darkest sides of ourselves.

The novel is long and sometimes feels even longer; it takes its time threading out the dense plot. There's a lot going on here. This is the kind of book that provides you with a family-tree chart upfront; by midpoint you may be wishing there were even more aids offered by the author to keep track of things.

There is a series of horrible crimes at the heart of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," but I hesitate to call this work a thriller. It's a crime novel, yes, but it has more on its mind than generic conventions. The author, the late Stieg Larsson, was a journo in the muckraking tradition, like his character Blomkvist. The book serves up a heapin' helpful of essay that tastes like story but isn't. And while the mystery element is shockingly compelling in spots, it's also surprisingly unsurprising in others.

A million Europeans can't be wrong, and I'd be dishonest to say there's nothing worthwhile about this novel that is so popular across the pond. Despite its stop-and-go pace and tortuous (and sometimes tortured) construction, there is a serious emotional undertone to the book that is undeniable.

If you're not yet bored with stories that present villains you've seen a hundred times before -- e.g., reactionaries, racists and capitalists -- you might just enjoy this. Me, I really wanted to like this book and I did, but just barely. It's a lesser "Smilla's Sense of Snow," and for many that's obviously enough.

I admit it, I am out-of-step with current, popular taste, because I seem to be the one man on earth who thinks that the international bestseller THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a lousy book. I'm not even sure why I finished reading it. Sonny Mehta, the book's U.S. publisher at Knopf, calls it "deeply ambitious, insightful and fiercely smart," and I am here to tell you it is none of those things.

The book is two-thirds exposition... we're talking hundreds and hundreds of pages of numbingly dull backstory that brackets the one third in the middle where something actually happens. Unfortunately, what happens isn't ambitious, insightful, fiercely smart or even mildly interesting. And it's all written with cliche-ridden prose that is so bad that it's distracting. (that may be the fault of the translator, Reg Keeland, and not the original, Swedish author, Stieg Larsson). Here are some examples:

"I think you are grasping at straws going to Hedestad."

and

"Ricky, that story is dead as a doornail."

and

"You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that these events were somehow related. There had to be a skeleton in one of their cupboards."

These are just three examples out of hundreds. And there are also a lot of clumsy descriptions, like this one:

"She looked like an ageing vampire -- still strikingly beautiful but venomous as a snake."

So is she a vampire or a snake? Are vampires venomous? And there are even clunkier sentences, like this one:

"Harald Vanger had gone back to his cave by the time Blomkvist came out. When he turned the corner, he found someone quite else sitting on the porch of the cottage."

Someone quite else?? Either Larsson was a very bad writer or the translator's grasp of English isn't so good. It certainly doesn't strike me as "fiercely smart."

The title of the book is misleading, too, since it refers to the hero's sidekick and not the actual central character, who is a one-dimensionally valiant reporter for a financial magazine who is irresistible to women. If the women that he meets don't bed him immediately and fall madly in love with him, it's clear that they desperately want to. Virtually all the men in the tale are sadists and all the women in the story have been sexually brutalized, willingly or unwillingly (it's mentioned in an aside that the reporter and his business partner/lover dabbled in S&M and bondage for fun years ago). Maybe that's why the original title of the book in Sweden was MEN WHO HATE WOMEN. I'm not kidding, that was the title.

It all adds up to a book that's heavy on dull exposition, glorifies rape & torture while pretending to disapprove, and is written in unbearably flat, cliche-ridden prose. I can't find a single positive thing to say about the book except that the galley was well-bound and is no longer taking up space on my bookshelf.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)

I really don't understand the critical orgasms over this book. Amazon pushed it on me for weeks, and the minute I stepped into Borders an employee ran over and recommended it. Thinking, this really better be the best book I've ever read, I took it up to the checkstand, where the register guy asked: "Did one of our employees recommend this?" Um, yeah. And Amazon, too. So of course I asked him why.

"Oh," he replied, "we've been told to recommend it this week." That should have tipped me off right there: recommendations handed down by management. Pfft. I hesitate to suggest a conspiracy, but - did someone end up with too many of these in a warehouse in Duluth? Did Oprah make a bet with someone that she could pull strings and make the most boring book in the world a best seller?

But I am suckered in by numerous good reviews and a fairly interesting book jacket description, so I buy it and take it with me on a trip camping with my family. Of course it totally sucks. I'm kicking myself because I feel like I really should have known. But the reviews - ALL the reviews - are absolutely positive from generally reliable sources, so I just DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND.

Here's why I don't like it: I am about a third of the way into it, and literally hundreds of characters have been introduced. NOT ONE of them has done anything interesting, so I am finding it nearly impossible to keep them straight. I am the type that will be more or less satisfied reading the back of a cereal box, but this is BAD. I mean bad. The mystery is dull. The who done it is more like a who cares. The two primary characters are so far not very likable at all - in fact, the review descriptions are more interesting than the book descriptions of them. I'm betting part of the problem is the translation, presumably - but god, there is just some boring writing in here, too. "He went to the store. He bought milk. He was cold. He went home." - BOR-RING! I am not really exaggerating, either.

Actual content:
"He put on a pot of coffee and made himself two sandwiches. He had not eaten a proper meal all day, but he was strangely uninterested in food. he offered the cat a piece of sausage and some liverwurst. After drinking the coffee, he took the cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and opened the pack."

Again, I'm willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt with the translating, but I wouldn't have gotten out of high school writing with that kind of boring and utterly pointless description. It sets the tone of "lonely dude being lonely" but really: two sandwiches? why two? sausage and liverwurst - fascinating.

That's really just a page I opened to randomly - there is much worse. I am truly bitterly resentful of every minute I am stuck on the side of this mountain without a good book to read. I'm ready to browse the mini mart down the way and read the real estate magazines instead. Why have all the reviewers and Amazon steered me SO WRONG???

I am not starting any kind of flame war here or trying to insult anyone's taste - so please don't get mad about my opinion. But if you love this book, please - tell me WHY. What am I missing?

If there is such a thing as a woman's novel, then this must be the antithesis-- a men's novel. The main character Mikael Blomkvist, has no emotional life, no self-reflection, no growth as a character, and doesn't have deep feelings or cares. The mystery at the center of the book is the only thing preventing him from being a cardboard figure (like all of the Vangers, characters in the novel who are not developed fully). All of his needs are gratified. His sexual conquests include every woman character except the one that is missing, Harriet (just give him time, I suppose, and she will be on the list). Oh, and by the way, they all pursued him! His ex-wife and daughter never intrude on his life. Like a true male fantasy, the central theme of the novel allows him to prove himself and get full revenge against his enemies and have two women competing to be his partner. The book has episodes of cheap violence that are not essential to the theme. Testosterone, anyone?

It was interesting for me to learn that the title of the book in the original Swedish was "Män som hatar kvinnor" or "Men who hate women," renamed for some reason in the English translation to The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. The original title actually describes the focus of the book pretty well.

While reading, I would often put the book down and wonder to myself, Why are we supposed to care? What character were we supposed to connect with? Even the scenery is flat. The author apparently doesn't like descriptive language (for example, whenever Blomkvist is going into town or running by the harbor, the author is downright abstemious about the visual details or mood, or, perhaps, just too lazy to conjure a scene.) The only exceptions are the sections with the sadistic sex scenes, in which Larsson clearly revels.

Those scenes were repellant for me and not just because of the violent acts they depict. These are the rare occasions in which the author invites the reader in to see and feel what a character is experiencing. The author is deliberately working the scenes to make the reader uncomfortable. It is as if the author has become the impassive figure at the edge of the bed, and the reader his squirming victim. No thanks!

The way the book has been marketed is ironic. "Mesmerizing, " one critic from USA Today said (on the back of the book). Don't you wish? For me it was one flat and boring scene after another, with no emotional life, no reflection, no depth, no description, and finally, no humanity.

Finally, besides being pedestrian the book was not well crafted. I found it very hard to get into this book. I started it over and over and had to re-read the first part more than once. I looked for an emotional "hook" and never found one. Unbelievably, the central plot wasn't even introduced until after page 100, and there wasn't much in the lead off chapters to hold our attention. The mystery of what happened to Harriet was the only thing that kept me reading, but I wouldn't describe the outcome as particularly compelling. Even the villains are cardboard and lack motive and depth. The religious angle --supposedly the clue that cracks the case-- is never explained. The deliberate edginess of the character Lisbeth Salander put me off and I never felt sympathetic toward her. The chapter headings, mimicking a financial report of a business deal, were somewhat amusing.

When I bought this book, the woman who waited on me told me that others had highly recommended this book but that she didn't particularly like it. I wish I could have had a longer conversation with her. It's a mystery to me that the book got so many positive reviews. I decided I'm going to tell other book lovers I know exactly why I wouldn't recommend reading this one.

My thoughts; "Eh."

I don't know, where does one start? I picked this book up after hearing how it was a best seller in Europe. A complex murder mystery that gripped the continent and if not for his unfortunate early demise would bring forth a novelist who would take the publishing world by storm.

After reading the five star reviews on Amazon and watching the QuickTime advertisement that provided stats that any author would envy, I sat back with a large cup of cocoa and prepared myself for a literary experience. I was excited.

***THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW***

The prologue didn't disappoint. I was immediately hooked. A tired elderly old man, Henrik Vagner, is ravaged by the disappearance of his niece and the gift he has received for his eighty-second birthday, a pressed framed flower. He has been receiving this same gift, mailed from different parts of the world, on the first day of November for the past forty-three years.

The book does a great job setting itself up. We go from the prologue to the main character Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist for the muckraker magazine, Millennium. The story opens with Mikael being disgraced in the courts for libel against the Wennerstrom corporation and sentenced to a few months prison. Before he is to go to prison, he is summoned to the Vangner residence where he is hired to perform one last investigation into the disappearance of Henrik's niece, Harriet Vagner.

We are also introduced to Lisbeth Salander, a physically and emotionally abused women who is under state controlled child custody at the age of twenty-four. In the Swedish court system, Salander has been uncooperative through her life's traumas and thus perceived as not fit to take care of herself. She finds herself going from one legal guardian to the next. Secretly though, she turns out to be a brilliant computer hacker and quite capable of handling herself.

It is after the set-up where the book strays from its strengths. The author attempts to bring to light the suffering and abuse of women in Sweden as well as the courts and law enforcements failure to keep them protected. The introduction of this story element almost feels like an afterthought and is too important of a topic to use for subtext.

There is a completely unnecessary rape scene that the author handles abhorrently. I am not one who believes that male author's are unable to accurately portray female characters in their story's, but Stieg Larsson is a shining example of why that perception exist.

To have one of the main characters suffer a rape and then handle it with a quick revenge sequence, followed by no real emotional impact to the character in question demonstrates a man's inability to understand just what impact rape has on women. The story didn't need this element and the credibility of the character was completely lost for me.

It was at this point where the excitement to read on, was replaced by the urge to close the book. Yet, I continued on.

Mikael can't seem to keep his "manhood" in his pants for very long and we find that he strolls into one sexual relationship after another. Again, there is no consequence for this behavior. Thus, there is no reason for it in the story other than to fulfill the author's sexual fantasies, unless of course it's perfectly normal in Sweden to go around screwing your neighbor, married or not.

The author sets up corporate corruption, but really it's never delved into and has absolutely nothing to do with main mystery of the story. As a matter of fact, most plot elements don't intertwine at all. The author has a lot he wants to tell, but he keeps all these elements separate. Again, he takes you out of one story and puts you into another. This left me frustrated as a reader.

It is while writing the mystery the Larsson is at his best. I found myself really captured by Mikael's quest to find out what happened to Harriet. It was fun going on the journey of discovery as he tracks down the clues that lead him to the conclusion. Unfortunately Mikael isn't the prime mover of the story and, as in many failed mysteries, the villain has to reveal himself to the protagonist in order to be discovered and taken down, which by the way is a very depraved plot line. Disturbing and odd in its truth, this plot line did not fit into the overall feel of the book. It was as if Hannibal Lecter took over for a couple of chapters. A sexually deviant Hannibal Lecter.

What is odd, is that the Antagonist (if you want to call him that) is taken down almost one hundred and fifty pages before the end of the novel. I found myself asking, is the mystery over? There is so much book left, what twist is going to come out of this? What curve ball is the author going to give that makes me say, "Of course, how didn't I see that coming?"

But that never happens. Instead the last hundred and fifty pages covers a caper plot that redeems Mikael against the Wennerstrom Corporation. A man we never really see and of whom we know nothing about. I found myself skimming through the last pages uninterested and just waiting for it to end.

If you like mysteries there are much better books out there. If you like stories about double cross, go read another.

Just skip this one.

OK, this book really irritated me. Bottom line: I don't understand why The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is such a mainstream hit.

My only conclusion is to believe that people who love this book have not read many good mysteries.

I prefer mysteries to any other kind of books and I have already read 17 this summer. I just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and - because the world is filled with so many really good mysteries - I absolutely cannot recommend this one.

I expected a lot from this best seller and, as you can tell, I was sorely disappointed. I wanted to quit so many times but I kept going because I kept hoping it would get better (and because my book club is reading it).

It did get better toward the end but not enough to warrant wading through all the stuff in the first 75% of the book.

What turned me off wasn't the distastefulness of the violence and sexual sadism or the fact that it contained two completely different stories.

The book just simply dragged. It was tedious and filled with lots of information (including the exhaustive Vanger family history) that was not essential to the story.

And the author didn't develop the characters enough for me to even care about them. I did come to care a little bit about the girl with the dragon tattoo because she was such a spitfire toward the bad guys, but I didn't care enough about her to make the book worth reading.

As for the mystery itself - (SPOILER ALERT) - it was obvious to me from the very beginning what had happened to Harriet because of the flowers sent annually to Vanger.

The end of the book gets pretty good but isn't worth what you have to wade through to get to it. And I really didn't like the very end.

I decided to read some of the reviews published on Amazon and was flabbergasted.

One person wrote, "The story moves with lightening speed."
Huh? The first half of the book is painfully slow and tedious and the pace doesn't pick up until near the end.

One said, "It was impossible to put down."
What?! I had to force myself to pick up the book each day.

One person wrote, "It will have you hanging on the edge of your seat" and another described it as "utterly stunning." Really?!

Another said, "Lisabeth is unforgettable, unlike most characters that populate mystery thrillers. There is such depth here."
Hello! Hasn't anybody ever read Elizabeth George? Talk about real depth!

Luckily, I found others who shared my opinion.

"... we're talking hundreds and hundreds of pages of numbingly dull back story that brackets the middle where something actually happens."
"... the writing is "cliché-ridden prose"
"The title of the book is misleading since it refers to the hero's sidekick and not the actual central character, who is a one-dimensionally valiant reporter for a financial magazine who is irresistible to women."
"There is an exhaustive back story developed of the Vanger family which is unnecessary, but takes up ALOT of space in the book"
"The author goes into excruciating detail about meaningless nonsense that has nothing to do with the story."
"There are moments of genuine suspense and excitement, but just not enough of a pay-off at the end."

So, I say, "Skip this book!"

I"m giving this book two stars. It was a huge disappointment to me, as it was recommended by a couple of people who I generally consider reliable in matters of taste.

As has been correctly observed already by many reviewers, the book suffers from poor writing. I suspect that this is mainly due to bad translation, but I don't read speak/read Swedish, and even if I did, I wouldn't put myself through this story again just to see if it's better in the native language.

Some of my big criticisms are;

1 - Boring main character. Mikael Blomkvist is terribly dull. Yes, he's the main character, not the girl of the title. She's maybe slightly more interesting, but only maybe, and only slightly.

2 - Too many sub-plots. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that there are a number of sub-plots that literally have nothing to do with the main mystery.

3 - Takes forever to get to the point. The first 200 or so pages don't deal with the main mystery in any way. That's a third of the book that doesn't have any bearing on the main theme.

Beyond those main criticisms, the book is filled with cliches and awkward writing. The editor and translator should be made to read this book 50 times over as punishment.

Back to the main character, Blomkvist. The more I think about him, the less I like him, and that's a really bad thing for the protagonist. He doesn't DO anything in this book. Things happen TO him, but he is reactive only. Yes, he starts to piece together a decades old mystery, but it's so drawn out, and ultimately uninteresting, that I didn't care.

Blomkvist is a poor father, a poor husband, a poor journalist, and a poor detective. Only through an embarrassingly coincidental and fortuitous meeting with his daughter does he receive the key to the mystery. If she hadn't miraculously popped in to make her comment, he'd have never figured it out. So he's literally a failure in all facets of his life. Why should I like him?

Lisbeth Salander, the girl of the title, is also deeply flawed. She's a complete social misfit, yet late in the book we are asked to believe that all of a sudden she can pull off a series of complicated deceptions involving disguises. She's suddenly completely at ease with strangers, and not only competent in social interaction, but excels. This is too much to believe. I found her off-putting, cold, unlikeable and quite unsympathetic.

I got the feeling that Larsson wrote this novel as a means of glorifying his profession. Unfortunately, he may have been a decent journalist, but he was a poor novelist.