Book #10 of 2010

An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally titled "Men Who Hate Women" in Swedish) 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.

When I first started reading this, I had a "oh, no!" moment because of all the financial, business-related talk in the beginning. I must admit that it took me about a week to get through the first 100 pages, reading it on and off. After one of the main characters (Blomkvist) starts working for Henrik Vanger, though, it really picks up, and it becomes very hard to put the book down.

There's a Vanger Family Tree chart at the beginning of the book, which is very useful since all the Vangers get mixed up in your head from time to time. I also had trouble keeping up with the real names and nicknames and everything, but you get used to that after a while as well. There's also maps of Hedeby by the author himself, which would be helpful to understand what events took place where.

I really liked the fact that there's more than one mystery going on in the book, and it's both event and character driven. While reading you might think you have solved the mystery, and even if you guess correctly who the murderer is, your jaw is pretty much gonna drop when the whole truth is revealed.

This is one of the few books I've read that really lived up to the hype. (5/5)

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