This is post 9 in @dragosroua's January 30 day writing challenge.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larrson
This is one of those times when the film lead me to the book. I had first watched the Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo shortly after it was released. I remember picking it up from the local DVD store (has it really been that long?), and as it started to play my wife and I looked at each other in disappointment as the subtitles came on and we realised this was not an English language film. It took only a minute or two for our disappointment to subside completely and before too long we were so enthralled in the movie and it's complex and interweaving plot lines that the subtitles and need to follow along with them became irrelevant.
We followed up shortly by watching all three of the films in this series. And didn't bother with the Hollywood versions when they came out a few years later. There was no point as these couldn't be bettered, in my opinion.
However, it wasn't until last month that I finally decided to read the book. As my interest in thrillers and mystery novels has increased, so too has my desire to go back and start with this story where it truly began. In the written form. If the movie was good then I was convinced that the novels would be too. And I wasn't disappointed.
Stieg Larsson has created a masterpiece of the genre. A complex and intertwined plot line develops that introduces us to the key characters as the story develops. Minor characters in the dozens enter, as a richly developed masterpiece unfolds.
Mikeal Blomkvist is the journalist who faces a stint in jail after having been sued for libelling a wealthy financier. Lisbeth Salander is the troubled and silent computer hacker who has been paid to delve in his life. And Henrik Vanger is the powerful industrialist who inadventantly bring them together.
Henrik Vanger is the head of the once mighty Vanger Corporation. He has been tormented by the disappearance of a young family member decades earlier. Convinced she was murdered, and unsatisfied with the now finished police investigations, he hires Mikael to investigate the matter.
Despite the job he is far from convinced that there is really anything to investigate. Until clues start showing up that say otherwise. Not only has a Vanger family member disappeared, presumably murdered, but potentially something much more sinister has been going on.
Lisbeth, having been paid to investiage the journalist, realises what Mikael has stumbled upon. And the tentacles of this decades old mystery stretch far and wide, having gone unnoticed for so long. Lisbeth is going to need all her computer prowess to help Mikael solve this mystery. Even just to stay alive.
The story deals with strong themes in the forms of violence against women, right-wing extremism, religion and religious symbology, and the failures of capitalism. It is a thriller with a very strong social conscience.
This is a enthralling novel of such depth and magnitude. A true lesson on how to write a thriller. The characters are complex, real human beings, we are drawn into their lives, their difficulties and intrigues, and left turning page after page as we seek to discover their fate. It holds the reader's attention from the beginning until the very end. Which works nicely, given there are two more in the series. An intelligent and complex thriller. Very highly recommended.
Image 1 source. Image 2 source.
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@naquoya
Links to earlier works
Notes From An Amateur Writer Collection