 "Photo: Courtesy of Knopf Publishing")
Former political journalist Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” titled “Men who hate Women” in its original Swedish, is like most novels in that it questions all that the characters believe to be true.
The book’s plot is centered around the death of the daughter of one of the richest families in Sweden and the disgraced financial journalist turned amateur detective, Mikael Blomkvist, hired by the girl’s uncle to discover the means of and reasons for her death, which he is convinced is murder. The problem is that the murder itself supposedly occurred four decades earlier and Henrik Vanger, the uncle, is close to death but desperate to know what happened to his beloved great niece.
Blomkvist finds himself drawn into a festering pile of secrets along with super hacker and partner, Lisbeth Salander, as he uses the cover of chronicling the family history to dig further and shed light on the dark truth of the girl’s death, as well as the family whose own murky past is brought up from the depths.
The novel itself is dark and gritty, and sparing no page for description, like at the start when four full pages are dedicated to describing a plant, a relationship and a past event, and all seemingly flow into one singular event that speeds the reader up to where the protagonist is at present. The characters are raw, emotional and full of angst as they each have to face themselves, like the financial journalist who accepts the job in order to avoid jail time and get the evidence to convict a corrupted businessman, his partner, Lisbeth who has multiple tattoos and pricings and a history to match them and the uncle with the death of his niece on his mind as well as his own shady past dealings.
The focus often shifts with the main plot not only encompassing why the girl was killed years ago, but the growing, if unorthodox, relationship between Blomkvist and Salander. The reader will find that as the novel progresses and the mystery deepens, there are prominent ties that show that there are things that carry on despite the age a person lives in, as well as the discovery that Blomkvist is somehow tied to Salander.
If you can get past the strange names, and the uncharted territory that comes with a novel not placed in America, then you will discover a gripping criminal mystery drama that offers a different view on the world, a view seen not from the people of the family, but the on-lookers peering in on something that they do not fully understand. This book, a dirtier, nastier look at Sweden, does not portray the lovely rolling hills with nuns strumming guitars and singing, but rather shows the same grit you would find in the back-room business deal of a New York City alley.
The novel proves shamelessly that no matter where you live, human nature remains the same and there are always dirty little secrets.
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