The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starts off by introducing us to the main characters of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Both these characters are a work of genius in themselves and the reader slowly but surely gets transported into the world that they live in. With easy to follow subject matter and some great translation from the original Swedish work, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has a style different to anything I’ve ever read before in a fiction novel. I was totally hooked onto it from the very beginning and loved the complex yet detailed storyline, eager to move on from one chapter to the next.
The character sketched by Stieg Larsson is done in a beautiful manner with Salander as unexpected a heroine that one can ever imagine. An amazing hacker, she is mysterious in her ways and actions and makes one wonder as to what she’ll do next. The other protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist is another character who has been created as the perfect folly to the mysterious Salander. The book truly comes alive when these two explosive characters meet and pair up to solve a decade old murder mystery.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo does have some violent and grisly scenes and may be disturbing to read for certain audiences’ but it is something that is essential to the plot of the book. The book does become a little dull towards the middle when Blomkvist is tracing the history of the Vanger family but apart from that the book is one that simply cannot be put down. I also felt the ending was a little rushed but that might not be the case with you.
The climax of the book is another great feature and although it was a little too violent for my liking, the book as a whole gets a five-star vote from my end. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a must read for all fiction and mystery lovers alike and truly deserves its place among the bestseller lists.