Pardon me if I seem a bit dazed, but I just came away from reading two amazing crime novels called
Men Who Hate Women (or
The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo) and
The Girl Who Played With Fire, both by Swedish author
Stieg Larsson. They're a huge, 500-plus-page opus, multilayered, multi-character tales by a writer of some considerable power. Full of social conscience and compassion, with great insight into the nature of moral corruption, they just knocked me out. During the time I had my nose stuck in its pages, I was thoroughly consumed by the work, and in those periods when I had to put the book down, I found myself grumpy and anxious to return to Larsson’s narrative. And when I finally finished them, I was still unable to sleep, my head filled with the high-definition world that this author has crafted, and his powerful characters. On the one hand, those books drained me emotionally; but they also filled me with emotion.
What’s most interesting about those books is the vast array of characters with which Larsson populates them. Captivating, as well, is the unfamiliar landscape against which this yarn unravels to its unexpected and chilling conclusion. The two principal characters here are a disgraced journalist and publisher, Mikael Blomkvist, 43, and his 24-year-old partner, the enigmatic and deeply troubled and fascinating Lisbeth Salander. In the spirit of the approaching year, let me make a prediction: this pair will soon join the pantheon of great crime-fiction protagonists.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finds Blomkvist being hired by wealthy 82-year-old Henrik Vanger, a former corporate exec, to determine whatever became of Harriet, his brother’s teenage granddaughter, who vanished four decades ago from a family reunion being held on the Vangers’ private and secluded island. No corpse was found. No witnesses came forward. And no evidence of Harriet’s fate ever turned up. Her disappearance is a complete mystery; nonetheless, Vanger believes the girl was murdered by a member of his own clan. Blomkvist, in a bad odor since losing a libel defense against a Swedish industrialist, and seeing Millenium--the magazine he publishes--suffer as a result, decides to take this case on. His incentives? Vanger’s offer of financial assistance and his suggestion that he has proof of the smugly victorious industrialist’s corruption.
So begins this twisted tale of family secrets, dastardly motives, and compassion that transports Blomkvist from a desolate Swedish island during a frigid winter, to London and then on to Australia. Salander joins forces with Blomkvist for the novel's second half, a 24-year-old anorexic and bisexual loner with multiple piercings and tattoos, a history of mental illness, a photographic memory and some useful – and never explained – computer hacking skills.
It isn’t long before both characters find themselves as much the hunted as they are the hunters, and it will demand all of their combined skills to untangle themselves from the wickedness imbuing the events that have shaped the Vanger clan.
In
Fire Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. Two Millennium journalists about to expose the truth about the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered, and Salander's prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society, but no-one can find her anywhere. Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist will not believe what he hears on the news. Knowing Salander to be fierce when fearful, he is desperate to get to her before she is cornered and alone. As he fits the pieces of the puzzle together, he comes up against some hardened criminals, including the chainsaw-wielding 'blond giant' - a fearsomely huge thug who can feel no pain. Digging deeper, Blomkvist also unearths some heart-wrenching facts about Salander's past life. Committed to psychiatric care aged 12, declared legally incompetent at 18, this is a messed-up young woman who is the product of an unjust and corrupt system. Yet Lisbeth is more avenging angel than helpless victim - descending on those that have hurt her with a righteous anger terrifying in its intensity and truly wonderful in its outcome.
Lisbeth Salander is the best character I'v read in years.
Lisbeth is basically a sociopath, having no emotions and no attachments to other human beings. She also wears leather and t-shirts with threatening slogans and has facial piercings and drives a motorcycle.
So naturally she’s a total psycho.
But Lisbeth would rather hack computers, working as a private investigator, than hack up other people. She is at once a vision of female empowerment – a kind of goth-geek Pippi Longstocking – and an echoing agglomeration of clichés, not least in the scenes where she is viciously sexually assaulted by her mental health worker and proceeds to take her revenge. She is the real heroine of the saga.
I want the third book.
Right now.
Please? ;;_______________;;
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