The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Him indoors raved about this book and its sequels. I'm not really into crime novels or thrillers so this was a departure for me.

There was huge hype surrounding this book, maybe partly because the author died after completing the trilogy but before publication.

Hmm. What can I say about this book?

At the beginning I couldn't get into it, but stuck with it because so many people seem to love it. After 200 pages my main thoughts were that if those 200 pages had been edited down to 100 pages, they might be quite reasonable. The plot picked up later on, and at times was intriguing, but the main whodunnit was guessable from an early point. The other crimes, and the ideas behind the novel, are clever and I suppose that's the other aspect that fuelled the hype.

But overall I found the book flabby, with too many sentences along the lines of 'He took off his clothes and went to bed.' Too much pointless detail which didn't move the story on or provide characterisation. The main characters are interesting in a way, but they all talk the same. The dialogue sounds alike whether its the 40-something journalist, the elderly industrialist or the 20-something female Goth computer hacker talking.

There are two further books in the trilogy. Jury's out re whether or not I'll read them. Possibly as holiday reads, skimming over the flabby prose.