Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It was my friend Bob Nye's recommendation that finally pushed me into reading this book by Stieg Larsson...not that it took much of a push. I tend to like Scandinavian mysteries (see my post for What Never Happens) and this was really satisfying in some ways and disappointing in others. After the 2nd chapter, I was hooked, couldn't put the book down and went on a book reading binge for about 6 hours til I finished. The characters are compelling and I'm discovering that I need to really care what happens to the characters in order to like a book these days. Through no fault of his own, investigative financial reporter and magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist has just lost a libel case in court and decides that leaving his magazine's editorial board is the best strategy to get the target of his investigation--corporate mogul Hans-Erik Wennerstrom-- off the warpath. His co-owner, Erika Berger, feels abandoned, and Wennerstrom hasn't given up trying to destroy the magazine by a long shot. Blomkvist is at loose ends, facing a stiff fine and several months jail time, so he's ripe to be plucked by another major Swedish industrialist for a personal project. Henrik Vanger wants Mikael to write his family's history as a cover story and find out who murdered his niece four decades ago. Harriet Vanger disappeared off an isolated island during a company/family conclave and Henrik is sure one of his family members killed her. The Vanger family turns out to have a whole host of unpleasant personalities and dark secrets. The other well developed character in the mix is a computer hacking genius and social misfit named Lisbeth Solander who does investigative work for a security agency through some fairly unorthodox means. She eventually get roped into the investigation of the missing Harriet, also. Which brings up one of my bitches about the book--Solander was badly treated in the end by Larsson and it's unforgivable given the shitty life she's had. Not that she isn't perfectly capable of looking after herself, but ...well you'll see when you read the book. And you must read the book. There are some provocative issues raised about personal responsibility--and the behaviors that test this principle range from the unethical to the horrific. Another pet peeves is that a character is introduced at the beginning of the book, the police investigator of the niece's disappearance, and then himself disappears from the remainder of the story, even when he could logically have been brought back in. There are also some characters whose motivations simply go unexplained and feel incomplete, like Cecelia Vanger. Overall though, I'm hooked and will round up the remaining books published posthumously, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.