Rashmi bookmarks “Män som hatar kvinnor” (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (translated by Steven T. Murray a.k.a. Reg Keeland) is the first book of the Millennium series trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. The title, which literally translates to ‘Men who hate women’, permeates through to this story of Mikael Blomkvist, investigative journalist with and publisher of Millennium; Lisbeth Salander, brilliant researcher and computer hacker working for Milton Security; and their search for Harriet Vanger in an attempt to resolve a 36-year old unsolved mystery.

With Blomkvist’s losing a libel case against industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, and his moving to the Vanger estate on Hedeby Island, the story shifts from one murky world of business and politics to another - but in neither case is it what it originally appears to be! While not in the class of Agatha Christie, the writing was certainly reminiscent of her style: set in a small, out-of-the way place, involving a large number of people, and covering a wide canvas, where nothing is as it appears! Barring one or two events, the narrative style was not one that relied on action-packed happenings to move forward, but instead, was a wonderful story-telling of mysterious people and their dark secrets, weaving its way through unearthing and interpretation of clues - from the delivery of pressed flowers, to coded entries in a diary, to pictures taken at a parade.

I also thought that the characters were drawn very well … Erika Berger the classy and smart business woman; retired industrialist Henrik Vanger who only has one passion keeping him alive; Cecilia Vanger whose brassy front hides a sad woman; Nils Bjurman the ward who takes a grotesque advantage of his power; Dirch Frode the lawyer and loyal friend; William Borg who wants only to destroy Blomkvist … every character was so memorable; even the ones that appeared very briefly, such as Holger Palmgren. Of course, the most fascinating character was Lisbeth Salander. Short and skinny to the point of looking anorexic, tattooed and pierced, socially awkward yet outspoken to the point of rudeness, and a genius computer hacker, this girl with the dragon tattoo is one of the more memorable characters that I have read about in recent times!

Okay, now for what I didn’t like! This did not happen more than two or three times, but when it did, it was quite jarring. There were sections when the narrator - while describing an incident - went into so much background information with such a lot of commentary on society and a history of the times; it quite broke the pace of reading. Example, when Lisbeth was thinking of getting a new laptop, there is so much detailed information on the specifications of a Mac laptop; it was beginning to read like an advertisement.

That, however, was a minor issue. What was really disappointing was the way this story was brought to an end. The last third of the book wraps up the mystery, and I have to say, it was a hastily put-together wrap-up of a story that had, up to that point, been told with such care. While the reveal was undoubtedly shocking, there was absolutely no lead up to the person, and who could very easily have been substituted by any one else. A good murder mystery is one where you don’t see the solution till it is told to you - but once it is told to you, it shines a light on clues scattered all over, and you say, ‘of course, I should have seen it all along!’ There was no such satisfying conclusion to this tale.