Stieg Larsson’s debut THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a hefty wallop of a book, a big mystery with big themes. It’s extremely ambitious, with three different stories interwoven into an overall tale. There’s the American-style financial thriller where the big industrialist is stealing money from his firms and competitors, and only computer-savvy hackers can figure out where the money is going; there’s the British-style cozy where a young lady has gone missing on an island where the only egress is blocked by a traffic accident; and there’s the very Scandinavian-style story of the mentally disturbed heroine trying to find her way in a very trying society.
Larsson ties all these disparate threads together into a remarkable debut. Mikael Blomkvist has been sentenced to jail for libel for making outrageous claims about a wealthy businessman, and he is eventually ousted from his editorial magazine post. In the interim, he hooks up with Henrik Vanger, an old-school captain of industry whose granddaughter disappeared almost 40 years ago.
She was last seen on Vanger’s private island just before a big family dinner, but then, a horrendous road accident blocked the only exit from the island. Blomkvist is hired to look into this story, and while he is at first greatly reluctant, he comes to realize there is an amazing tale to be told in the details. Helping him to tell this tale is the book’s eponymous heroine, Lisbeth Salander, an asocial master researcher who has some serious emotional and trust issues.
Larsson works these three very different stories, all made up of different styles or approaches, into one very coherent whole. It takes a while, and one must not give up through the first 100 or so pages, in order to give all the stories time to mature. Soon, you will find yourself completely immersed in the story of the missing Harriet Vanger, and just how Mikael and Lisbeth are going to solve her ages-old disappearance.
Larsson’s style, in translation by Reg Keeland, is smooth, extremely detailed, but maybe sometimes a bit too prosaic in its “here’s how we go about things” style. But part of that helps to make it very realistic. When we read exactly how Lisbeth begins her computer searches on the background of a suspect, it makes complete sense and grounds you in the overall story.
And it’s quite a story. The background of the Vanger family, the financial machinations of the individual whom Blomkvist was convicted of libeling, and the struggle that Salander has in just dealing with everyday life, all have this intrinsic pull on the reader which Larsson ably exploits. This is a good, strong mystery that should appeal to readers of many different types, as the author combines different story motifs into one amazing thriller.
The saddest thing about all of this, however, is that Larsson died in 2004, after having delivered this title and two other books which will also be published by Knopf. Rest in peace, Stieg Larsson. I’m sorry to hear that we’ll know little more about the strange girl with the dragon tattoo, and I hope that readers everywhere will buy your books to discover your unique world. —Mark Rose
