by Stieg Larsson, trans. by Reg Keeland

Wildly popular since its European publication in 2005, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo centers on Henrik Vanger, an influential Swedish businessman who has been receiving pressed, neatly framed flowers on his birthday for nearly forty years. His niece, Harriet, gave him the first few presents, but Henrik continues to receive a yearly gift even after Harriet disappeared on the family’s private island in 1966. Because of the island’s small size, Henrik and the local police force quickly became baffled when Harriet’s body was never found. Henrik believes a family member murdered Harriet in 1966, cleverly disposed of her remains, and continues to torment Henrik with the yearly gift. Despite Henrik’s relentless interviews and police investigation, Harriet’s killer was never found.

Forty years later, Henrik recruits Mikael Blomkvist, a private investigator and investigative journalist to solve the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance. Mikael soon becomes absorbed in the Vanger family saga, a deeply dysfunctional clan with a number of eccentric tendencies. After finding a link between Harriet’s disappearance and a string of other Swedish women brutally murdered in years past, Mikael hires an assistant, Lisbeth Salander. A pierced, tattooed girl with a troubled past, Salander helps Mikael unravel the dark secrets of the Vanger family, with the knowledge that a serial killer may still be preying on innocent Swedish women.

Throughout this lengthy novel, Larsson takes the opportunity to fully explore the history of the Vanger clan, the motives of the murderer, and the back-stories of Mikael and Salander. Larsson’s writing is clear and concise, and he has an eye for meticulous detail. The pace of the novel starts slowly, as the reader is introduced to Henrik, Mikael, and Salander. The pace becomes increasingly rapid as Mikael and Salander discover the connections between Harriet’s disappearance and the ghastly murders of other young women near the family’s island. Larsson also introduces a number of seemingly disposable secondary characters in the beginning of the novel, but their varied talents and resources become indispensable as Mikael and Salander come to realize the magnitude of the Vanger family’s crimes.

Larsson’s main characters are undeniably three-dimensional, with Salander’s complex history serving as one of the book’s most compelling sections. Her computer hacking talents and access to weapons could easily pigeonhole her as a stock “punk, rebel-without-a-cause” character, but Larsson takes the time to paint a richly detailed portrait of the truculent young girl. In Larsson’s words, “Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child’s take on morals and ethics.” Her fragile relationship with Mikael is fascinating, as are the parallels Larsson draws between the serial killer and Salander’s abusive guardian.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is translated from the Swedish novel Men who Hate Women. Misogynistic violence plays a major theme in Larsson’s book, along with corruption and betrayal in the financial industry. With themes that could easily fall to melodrama, Larsson resists the temptation to make the story overly sentimental. Larsson knows his subject; he served as Editor-in-Chief for Expo magazine, dedicated to revealing corporate corruption and intolerance. Mikael’s exposé of wealthy businessman Hans-Erik Wennerström may mirror Larsson’s own activist tendencies, and the author alludes to many famous English and Swedish crime fiction writers. Although the novel is the first of a trilogy, the book can stand alone on its own merits. The mystery is solved and the serial killer is discovered, but there are enough loose ends to make the reader anxious for the next chapter of Salander and Mikael’s story. With two million copies already sold in Europe, and Stieg Larsson being hailed as Sweden’s top author (contending with Henning Mankell), I eagerly anticipate the sequels to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. By introducing uniquely forceful characters and manipulating the pace and tone of the story to match each discovery, Larsson has created a captivating and compelling novel.

Reviewed by Stephanie Turza

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, trans. by Reg Keeland
Knopf Publishing Group, 2008.
Cloth, 480 pgs, $24.95
ISBN-10 : 0307269752