An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.
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.
{"itemData":[{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":12.12,"ASIN":"0307454541","isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":12.65,"ASIN":"030745455X","isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":12.23,"ASIN":"0307454568","isPreorder":0}],"shippingId":"0307454541::ReYLmqS7t%2FktrQHjg1fJmCREuDhyGUgI%2BZkyEh43FNp69Cb1O7OMlksUG7bLSxsqgkbtMWB8R0xK%2BHF%2BfBlg0BizO2dOR2so%2BU0oROINrgo%3D,030745455X::tFNNJhTMUOqPxVBFgrwybL49Yuz2A84J8aT8zol3exTKeMNSttJP0MwYVlX8nNHGouFkacBQ%2B8ASde2F5JUgboHpjpfmviUjrNB1HaMY43zWqXdZdu7WuQ%3D%3D,0307454568::CRJk%2FQRoPQO%2BGvk3NBiZnqGZ9DZqKn28anLaI%2BZJJ%2BjhdUPYH2H08%2BtJESU3Ws2snd3WgEr490LhdfNKw3kqSjXB4MZDparVodrEL31Q2ZpDVEtnDpCMNg%3D%3D","sprites":{"addToWishlist":["wl_one","wl_two","wl_three"],"addToCart":["s_addToCart","s_addBothToCart","s_add3ToCart"],"preorder":["s_preorderThis","s_preorderBoth","s_preorderAll3"]},"currenyCode":"USD","shippingDetails":{"xz":"same","yz":"same","xy":"same","xyz":"same"},"tags":["x","y","z"],"strings":{"addToWishlist":["add to wishlist","Add both to Wish List","Add all three to Wish List"],"addToCart":["Add to Cart","Add both to Cart","Add all three to Cart"],"showDetailsDefault":"Show availability and shipping details","shippingError":"An error occurred, please try again","hideDetailsDefault":"Hide availability and shipping details","priceLabel":["Price:","Price for both:","Price for all three:"],"preorder":["Pre-order this item","Pre-order both items","Pre-order all three items"]}}
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan
Stieg 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.
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.Read more ›
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.Read more ›
Looking at all the rave reviews online by both customers and professional reviewers, I feel like I somehow missed the boat. Only the NY Times review made me feel that I wasn't alone in my dislike for this book, even though when I started I had very high hopes and wanted to like it.
A lot of people have already outlined the plot, so I won't go into it here especially since it's rather complex in and of itself.
Personally, what set me off at first from the book is the writing style. It is how one would write an article for a newspaper, magazine, etc.; succeint and to the point. Which of course makes sense looking at the fact that the late author was a reporter. But what feels wrong to me is the fact that he spends so much time telling. Everytime I started to get an image in my mind about what a house, village, person looked like, it could never fully form because I was essentially being told the basic outline and that's all. This writing style is not immersive to me, nor were the parts where plot advancements/clues are literally bashed over the readers head just in case we really are as obtuse as Herr Larsson seems to suspect.
I found both lead characters rather stiff and lacking any sort of defining personality. Mikael Blomkvist, the male lead, apparently is so hot that every women wants to have sex with him and a vast majority end up loving him. He has been a serial adulter for over twenty years with one woman, losing his own marriage to this affair and also takes on other women on the side. He really seems to have no regard for any of his sexual partners and believes that sex is merely a recreation and its your fault if you even dare suggest it be thought of as something more.... Several times in the novel he makes incredibly dumb desicions and at the climax of the main mystery he makes one of the stupidest mistakes, something so brazenly foolish that you wonder if he was given any brains at all.
Lisbeth Salander, the female lead is a little more sympathic but Larsson seems focused on making every bad thing in world that is possible happen to her. This is a spoiler, but seeing that it has been mentioned all throughout the reviews here I'll go ahead: there is a graphic rape scene regarding her. While, supposedly, the rapist returns in the second book, it still seems completely out of place and unnecessary. It does nothing to further the plot/story whatsoever. To make matters worse the whole sequence reads like a revenge fantasy rather then what would actually happen to a 24 year old, emotionally impaired woman who was sadistically raped.
These three things mixed together - the writing style, and the two main characters - made for a very subpar reading experience for me. I so wanted to like this book, I thought the plot sounded intense and like a breath of fresh air. Instead, as the centeral mystery wound to it's conclusion, things just got out of control and exited the realm of what could be believed and instead seemed to be used more for shock value.
For those that are worried about reading a translated book, don't be. Yes there are a couple of translator errors and a couple of sentences that aren't just clunky in English but actually don't make sense unless you reorder the words. Other then these small problems though, it's pretty smooth. As someone who has done translation work before, it's hard to be 100% perfect and this is definitely one of the better translations that I've read.Read more ›
This is very disappointing. Please develop book giving functionality for the kindle ASAP! If you want for this product to take off, people need to be able to buy books for other people.
I'm married to a man with Asperger Syndrome, and my son also has it, and I can definitively answer that Salander meets the criteria :) Her obsessiveness, her inability to connect to others, and even her savant abilities can all be part of it.
Hedeby Island is fictitious like Hedestad (Hedestad = Hede City, Hedeby = Hede Village). Unfortunately both the UK and US publishers did not see fit to include the two maps of the island and its environs that were in the Swedish edition, which make the plot much easier to follow.
Agreed. But I felt that the family, by and large, must have known something of the "problem" that reached its most ghastly state with Martin. All living there together for decades on an island, and with a wide enough circle of people knowledgeable about it - Gottfried, Isabella,... Read more
