Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
I went into the read thinking that this was going to be an action novel for some reason. The title is very provocative and the movie promos feature a very dynamic-looking female character. I’ve done my best to stay away from details about this book so I really wasn’t prepared for what I encountered.
Spoilers below:
Since I was expecting an action novel, the ploddingly slow start was confusing. The prose is not unpleasant, and the details are interesting, but there is a lot of explaining and talking without anything much happening. This goes on for more than half the book.
When I finally realized that I was going to be reading a murder mystery and a financial mystery, I pretty much knew right away what the resolutions were going to be. The set up for both story lines are pretty obvious. No, I was not prepared for the exact specifics and how disturbing the crime portion turned out to be, but those plot revelations always had to be told to us. They were not ones that we, the readers, could have figured out on our own. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that kind of mystery.
Overall, the book was readable and fairly entertaining. I did read late into the night because I wanted to find out what happened. But I do have trouble with the questionable pacing and the lack of depth within the main characters.
I know that this was a first effort, and that Larsson died before the manuscripts ever reached an editor’s eye, but for me, it would have been a pick-up-and-put-down novel. I’m still not sure why it has just caught fire around the world. Thanks to the reputation of the series, however, I will have to give the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, a try.