Friday, June 1, 2012

First of the Month Book Review - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had heard that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson was a bit slow in the beginning, and it is. And it never turned into a serious page-turner, although it kept my attention sufficiently. The book demanded focus in order to keep the numerous Vanger family characters straight, and honestly with my disjointed reading intervals - stealing a few minutes here and there - and the author's switching from using first names to last names, I found myself getting some of the characters mixed up at times.

The story is about a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who investigates the 40-year old disappearance of a wealthy Swedish scion with the assistance of Lisbeth Salander, who is an investigative prodigy/computer hacker (and the girl with the dragon tattoo). There are interesting twists and turns, and a lot of violence, so it's not for the faint of heart.

Along with a slow start, I felt the ending dragged also. Once the murder mystery case is resolved, the novel continues with a wrap-up of sub-plots, and there are just too many remaining pages of reading after the central story ends.

Overall, I liked the story well enough, but it didn’t live up to all the hype.

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