Hard read, but worth the journey

January 5, 2012
Reviewer: A reader from Toronto, Canada

Like millions of people worldwide, I was absolutely captivated by these three books and their strange and utterly unconventional anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander. That Larsson manages to evoke such sympathy for her, despite her anti-social nature and penchant for violence, is quite remarkable. Of course, we might feel differently if not for the monumental injustices she has suffered at the hands of a few corrupt individuals. She is a victim who has responded to her situation by becoming an outsider.

The story is certainly an intricate one, but Larsson manages to lead us through the maze without losing us along the way. In fact, one of the joys of the books is gradually realizing that there are yet more levels of complexity to get your head around.

In "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," take-no-prisoners journalist Mikael Blomkvist has just lost his reputation, his savings and his freedom (hello, jail sentence!) after a nasty libel suit from an executive named Wennerström.

Then he's unexpectedly contacted by aged industrialist Henrik Vanger, to discover what happened to the guy's grandniece. He's offering evidence on Wennerström, so Mikael has no choice but to accept -- and as he investigates the sinister Vanger family, he joins forces with Lisbeth Salander, an eccentric, abused computer hacker. And as Mikael unearths the clues to Harriet's disappearance, he also finds some skeletons long kept buried.

"The Girl Who Played With Fire" finds Mikael investigating sex trafficking in his own country, and young girls who are sold into it. Unknown to him, Lisbeth is keeping very close tabs on his work -- especially since she was abused as a child, and now plots revenge on the sex traffickers. But when she's accused of murder and ends up on the run, Mikael must discover what lies at the core of these crimes...

And finally, "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest" takes place directly after the second book. Lisbeth has been shot in the head, her malevolent father Zalachenko is in the same hospital claiming that she tried to kill him, and some nasty government forces want her locked away, as she was as a child. Her only hope lies in Mikael, who must unravel a government conspiracy formed around the young hacker...

Larsson's books are a unique blend of old and new -- he takes the usual mystery/thriller tropes (locked room mystery, government conspiracies) and enfolds it in a ruthless, blistering look at modern Swedish society and sexual aggression. It's a dark, dangerous, unfair world where the truth is quashed, powerful forces conspire against individuals, and women are treated horribly -- usually shown via the eccentric, punky "girl with the dragon tattoo."

His prose is rather bleak and often quite gritty, and a certain brand of understated passion shines through -- the kind that feels the need to express itself even though it takes place in fiction. And while most of the first book focuses in Mikael, in the second and third Larsson's style splits in half -- one half is the more staid, ordinary perspective of Mikael and others, and the other half is the wild nihilism of Lisbeth ("If death was the black emptiness from which she had just woken up, then death was nothing to worry about. She would hardly notice the difference").

Mikael and Salander make an intriguing odd couple. He starts world-weary and demoralized that he seems to care about nothing, but regains his passion for the truth; the only downside is that he's a bit Marty Stuish, since all women seem to adore him. And Salander is a mass of hurts and quirks -- she's a vibrant, wild genius who lashes out at those who hurt women, and has been constantly tortured by those around her since childhood (even as an adult, she's forced to have a legal guardian).

Take your average thriller/mysteries, smother them in disillusioned, morally-bankrupt noir... and you'll have something like the Millennium Trilogy. A hard read, but worth the journey.