The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Review

Not your average crime novel

Review

I’ve arrived quite late to the Stieg Larsson party as I had several other books on when this one first hit the shelves – I was impressed that everywhere you looked someone was reading one of the books but I didn’t get into it myself until it was picked for my book club’s reading list…

I found his prose engaging, though I can’t shake the feeling that it would be even more enjoyable to read in the original Swedish. While the storyline is conventional enough, what lifted the book for me was the manner in which the characters interacted (especially Blomkvist and Salander). They are believable in their own right as ‘real’ people but it is the unexpected chemistry between them which allows the case at the story’s core to be solved. I found this relationship intriguing and, while I haven’t become a diehard fan, I most definitely intend to read the other two books in the series. I also enjoyed the pacing of the book – I felt it gave a real sense of time passing and the frustrating highs and lows of trying to solve a decades-old mystery as well as the meticulous research that crime analysts and journalists both devote to their work.