Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire

I've had a copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo sitting on my bookshelf and gathering dust for some time now - so long, in fact that I can't accurately recall when I bought it. I haven't had any interest in mysteries or crime fiction since I was a teenager and read mystery and historical fiction novels but after hearing so many positive reviews of the book I picked up a copy, knowing that I would eventually get around to reading it.

I'm not sure what made me finally pick it up, but I began to read while waiting for the election results to process on Tuesday night. I was hooked in the first 30 pages or so, and read the entire book in one 8 hour sitting. I was completely drawn into the story and desperate to unravel the crime and knew I could not sleep without knowing how the novel ended. When I finally finished, it was nearly 9am and I made an impulsive decision - I drove up to Capitol Hill and visited the new Elliot Bay Book Company store to buy a copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire.

I read the entire book in one sitting as well, without breaking for so much as a nap in between books. Now I am torn between buying a hardback copy of the third book to resolve the cliff hanger, or wait for the trade paperback to release in early 2011. I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book - beyond the fact that it's a crime novel it's overwhelming in its graphic depiction of violence against women. The main female character is brilliant and unique, a pint-sized gothic punk computer hacker with an extremely secretive past. In a fashion typical to the genre, she is constantly underestimated by everyone around her. Owing to her small stature, her apparent youth, her atypical appearance and her perceived mental handicaps people assume she is harmless until she strikes - either through clever application of her computer and investigative skills or through aggressive physical contact.

The main male character is a decent, nice fellow who has just been dealt a very harsh blow to his personal integrity and career as a journalist crusading against various injustices. Either one of these characters, Mikael or Lisbeth, would make for an exceptional focus to the series. However, what really puts this over the top as an excellent and enjoyable read is the combination of the two. A large portion of the first novel is devoted to the work up to their first face-to-face encounter. When they finally meet, it's very gratifying as a reader. Their parallel investigations converge and the plot explodes. What had until that point been a slowly building juggernaut of complicated corporate and familial intrigue escalates immediately into an intense battle for survival. The final revelations caught me by surprise as they unfolded - at several points in the story I identified possible motives and killers, only to have all my theories repeatedly dashed. The ridiculously large cast is difficult to follow but does allow for so many choices for a villain that it leaves the reader constantly guessing. Being accustomed to the restraints of crime dramas on television I was overjoyed to explore a crime that wasn't simple to unravel.

Though I did enjoy the second book, I didn't find it nearly as good as the first. Though I will need to reread both books when not completely exhausted from a marathon of reading, I suspect that my general impression will hold. Part of what made the original story so engrossing for me was watching each of the main characters develop separately, knowing that they would eventually meet and wanting desperately to see that interaction. The pacing of the story and the character development were extraordinary. I was pleased that the second book revisits this model and tells parallel stories again, but I was displeased with the very small amount of contact Lisbeth and Mikael had. The beginning of the second book was intended to show her growth as a person, the ways she was changing and the travels she undertook during a rather lengthy period of absence, but to me it read as a confusing muddle of stories that never circled back to have any significance to the case that drove the book's plot apart from her newfound interest in complex theoretical mathematics.

Once the plot got rolling, though, I found myself pulled into the story once again. I was pleased to see the return of a smaller character from the first book, and his interactions with Lisbeth. The Girl Who Played With Fire kept me guessing for quite a while, but the plot was not nearly as focused and driven as the first book, with three different camps (the police, the journalists, and the hackers) each attempting to solve their own mystery and the reader along for the ride just wanting to know who the mysterious Zala is and how he might tie together all three crusades. It's not until the very last moment that the investigations truly overlap and the truth becomes clear, but even so the book manages to end right on the edge of the cliff, leaving readers desperate for the next installment.