Stieg Larsson

This book has had a lot of hype, which has been known to put me off, and yet when I needed a third book for my Waterstone’s 3for2 offer, I picked this one up. I wasn’t at all disappointed – it was gripping to read, with a thrilling plot and excellent characters, moreover it’s set in Sweden, for a good part in Stockholm, and I’ve been to Stockholm so it’s fun to recognise the places you’ve visited as you read!

Anyway, first there’s Mikael Blomkvist, a sort of ideal journalist who loves his craft, and is critical of other journalists whom he sees as sucking up to big business. He owns his own magazine and has a rather bizarre ‘friends-with-benefits’ relationship with his co-owner Erika, and the novel starts with his conviction of libel. Then there’s Lisbeth Salander, an unlikely computer hacker with a troubled past who despite being often rude and surly still manages to come across as likeable to the reader. These two are such excellently drawn characters that I assume they’ll be the protagonists in the next two novels in the trilogy.

The plot of this novel centres around an aging businessman who, as he nears his death, is still haunted by the murder of his avourite great-niece thirty years earlier and hires Blomkvist to solve the mystery on a cold, isolated island in Northern Sweden. Cue lots of atmospheric snowy descriptions, and a very chilling ambience as Mikael realises someone will stop at nothing to prevent the secrets coming out.

Obviously I won’t ruin the ending (which I’m afraid I half saw coming), but what surprised me about this book is how angry it made me. I expected it to be a classic example of the Agatha Christie style locked-room mystery, but instead it was a much darker exploration of domestic violence, particularly against women, in modern Sweden. Yes it’s an exciting thriller, but this second side, which I didn’t see coming, affected me much more deeply.

Rather sadly, the author delivered the manuscripts for these three novels to a publisher and died shortly afterwards, so he never saw the success they became.

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