The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first volume in the Millennium trilogy, named after the magazine where one of the main characters, Blomkvist, works. Blomkvist is facing a jail sentence after losing a libel case to Wennerstrom, a corrupt financier. He resigns as editor to minimise the impact of the adverse publicity on the magazine and is offered a bizarre assignment by Vanger, the head of an industrial dynasty. At a lose end, he decides to accept the job on the promise that at the end of the assignment Vanget will provide him with information that will allow him to get back at Wennerstrom?

The Vanger family live on a small island, linked to the nearby town of Hedestad by a single bridge. Blomkvist's assignment is to investigate the 40 year old mystery surrounding the disappearance of Harriet, Vanger's 16 year old granddaughter. She went missing on the day a car had collided with an oil tanker on the bridge, cutting off the island for several hours. Harriet was last seen shortly before the crash, her absence sparked a massive search of the island but her body was never found, even though it was impossible to get off the island at the time.

The Vanger family is an odd assortment of unpleasant characters with many skeletons in the closet, including links with the Nazi party. There are hints of incest and violence towards women which, as the plot unfolds, become more substantiated. Blomkvist discovers that prior to being offered the assignment Vanger had had him investigated by a young woman called Lisbeth Salander (the owner of the dragon tattoo) who later becomes crucial to Blomkvist's own investigations. Salander is slight, weird and a brilliant computer hacker - an integral part of the plot - she plays a major role in helping Blomkvist discover the awful secret of the Vanger family and the truth about what happened to Harriet. Salander, a ward of the state, is being abused herself by her new legal guardian, for which she takes her own appropriate but dreadful revenge.

I found the story a bit slow to get started as the author introduced the characters, but the plot is well thought out and held my attention, even though the Swedish names and place names required a bit of concentration at times. I shall certainly read the second book of trilogy.