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| The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | 
 enlarge | Author: Stieg Larsson
Creator: Reg Keeland
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.06
You Save: $10.89 (44%)
New (32) Used (11) from $12.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 26
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.6
ISBN: 0307269752
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.738
EAN: 9780307269751
ASIN: 0307269752
Publication Date: September 16, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081006210455T
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan
Product Description
A sensation across Europe—millions of copies sold
A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.
It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.
It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Lives up to the hype October 7, 2008
With much trepidation I purchased this book. It seemed like with all the crazy raves it just couldn't be that good. It's that good. Surpassed all expectations and that is so rare. So much solid writing craft here and I think it will become a classic. Vegas Hustler
 The most original heroine in quite some time October 6, 2008
There are two key protagonists here: a Swedish journalist in his forties named Mikael Blomkvist, who exposes financial corruption via his gadfly news magazine, Millennium, and is successfully sued for libel. And then there's the star: Lisbeth Salander, one of the most original characters in years. This emotionally-stunted, violence-inflicted computer hacker sports various tattoos and body piercings, probably suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, and has been under state guardianship in Sweden since she was not more than a child.
When Blomkvist is enticed to live in the middle of nowhere to investigate the presumed murder of the grand-niece of the semi-retired industrialist, Henrick Vanger, a series of events begin to spiral that brings these two unlikely characters together. The result is a series of twists and turns as they team up to get to the bottom of this forty-year-old mystery and, at the same time, enable Blomkvist to clear his name and move his leftist watchdog magazine out of the red.
The novel really sparkles when it focuses on Lisbeth, who is unique and captivating. The revenge scene had me cheering; I can imagine how it would play on the big screen. The book loses its edge as the mystery begins to be solved. No spoilers, but the evil doer, who was at least moderately fleshed out, acts and sounds like a cartoon character during the long-awaited revelation. The novel then began to sound like an old-fashioned Perry Mason episode.
I have read that Stieg Larsson was the editor-in-chief of Expo, an anti-racist magazine. It makes sense, then, that the book becomes a conduit for causes that Larsson feels passionately about: violence and subjugation of women, right-wing extremism, and the incompetency of the media. I found the book to be a true page-turner -- I read all 467 pages at one sitting during a transcontinental flight -- with enough substance to keep me intrigued throughout.
An engaging and entertaining family saga with a little crime thrown in October 4, 2008
As I was reading this book I couldn't help thinking that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a bit of a misleading title. While Salander, the girl with the titular tattoo, is arguably the second most prominent character in the book and necessary as the person who through her investigative skills and computer hacking uncovers many of the clues needed to solve the two mysteries laid out in the book, the title suggests a seedy, underworld crime and a mysterious heroine. Salander is neither, although she is quite an interesting character, and it's nice that the author doesn't judge her anti-social tendencies and problems, preferring to offer us a glimpse into their possible causes. The protagonist is actually Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just been convicted of libel for his reporting of financial wrongdoing by a titan of Swedish industry. Before he has time to report for his prison sentence, he is hired by an another titan of Swedish industry, Henrik Vanger, an aging man whose company has fallen into disarray, to look into the disappearance of his niece nearly 40 years previously, under the guise of shadow writing an autobiography about the Vanger clan.
The real star character in the book is the Vanger family itself, the whole, confusing, squabbling cast of near and distant cousins, fascists, Nazis, haridans and seemingly ordinary folk, and their relationship with each other, especially as it unfolds as Blomkvist digs into the family's past. The main mystery of the book -- what happened to Harriet Vanger one fateful day in 1966 -- ends up being pretty easy to figure out, but the ins and outs and the hows and whys aren't so straightforward and it's a joy for most of the book trying to keep the various family members straight (although a family tree would have been nice) and watching how the unfolding drama affects them.
Where the book falls down just slightly, in my opinion, is its heavy handed treatment of some of the subjects in the book, important though they are. A few reviewers have noted that the Swedish title of this book was Men Who Hate Women, and had I known that, perhaps I wouldn't have been bothered by the sheer number of men in the book who do just that, most in pretty horrid and aggressive ways. I suspect that part of the problem I had with this book is just a matter of cultural translation -- the book takes place in Sweden and was written by a Swedish author who was both a journalist and a crusader against right-wing extremists in Sweden. While he also uses the book to rail against the ineptitude of financial reporting in Sweden, the Nazi and fascist parties in Sweden, extremist religions, financial malfeasance, journalistic ethics, the failure of Sweden's approach to institutionalized care of juveniles, and other causes clearly near and dear to him before he died, his big one is violence against women and he cites lots of statistics about the number of women who are victims of sexual assault. Heck, one of the books that Blomkvist reads for pleasure is Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing, a crime mystery based around violence against women. But Larsson overplays his case just a bit by having too many men who are absolute creeps (not just jerks), and the last one is totally gratuitous. The point could have been made better with a slightly subtler hand. Oddly (to my American sensibilities, anyway, but maybe this is another problem in cultural translation), the book is full of men and women who don't seem to mind their spouses/lovers having other lovers at the same time. It's a kitchen sink of Swedish liberalism that sometimes gets in the way of what is for the most part a rollicking good read with interesting characters and settings.
The writing is mostly very good, with some overly staccato dialogue that doesn't sound natural, but again, this may be an issue of how speech sounds in Sweden since it seems that the translation has been quite well done.
Of the two mysteries, the main one, about Harriet's disappearance, is the more compelling. The other, involving financial crimes is interesting at a very intellectual level, but Larsson resolves the ethical issues a bit too easily.
Larsson keeps the characters true to themselves rather than offering a completely tidy and happy ending for all, but the main issues are resolved and I ended it feeling satisfied. It's an excellent, if slightly flawed, first novel, and I will read the sequels if they are ever translated into English.
 Two stars or five? October 3, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I think the problem with this novel, which other reviewers have ably summarised, is that it is an artificial construct.
I mean, I didn't find the story boring, tne number of characters excessive or the plot(there are in fact two; which is the main one in human terms, possible future reader?) difficult to follow, as other negative revs have. On the contrary, for me the narration flowed agreeably, the twists were unexpected, and the book didn't pretend to be what it was not (a semibrow literary piece). But it, or rather its main characters, are implausible: cardboard, not flesh-and bone. At all times you're aware you're reading a story, not something that could have been real life. Here we revert to an Ellery Queen type of novel without its intellectual tease, which leaves ... nothing.
So the book is basically a kid's one (although full of episodes a real kid souldn't read), with heroes that are decent, loyal, intelligent, charming, truthful -one of them agonizes over a moral dilemma that could find a place in Lincoln's hagiography-, with liberal worldviews, etc.; with a convenient deus ex machina that finds out everything that's needed at the drop of a hat; with corrupt -and worse- financial tycoons/villains; with real dark, dark imperturbable villains with awful perversions and insatiable bloodlusts; and with a closing tirade about the evils of finance (for maximum impact the book should have been published after the current Wall Street turmoil) with words lifted almost straight out of Keynes.
Perhaps I could summarise it all with three words: it's a politically correct book. Nothing against them, of course, and for that (and the research it inconspicuously packs) I give it three stars. But if you have read Lehane's "Gone, baby, gone" (a book less grisly by far, but that poses a real moral dilemma), you'll understand what I mean.
One of the best books I've read in years... October 2, 2008
I finished 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' in a blaze of glory-- it was one of those things where you look at how much you have left to read and then you look at the clock and say "One more chapter"... The chapter is finished-- you again look at the clock and what now remains to be read and say "One more hour"... The cycle continues unabated until 4am when you finish the book and are a mixture of sleepy (it's 4am), excited (it was a really good book), sad (the really good book is now over and you're back where you started), and anticipatory (there are *sequels* to the really good book-- however, they haven't been translated to English yet and are not available-- le sigh).
Larsson has done a fantastic job of creating memorable, well fleshed-out characters and combining them with a new and intriuging plot... Some of the material is not for the faint of heart, but it gives the story a depth and breadth that is lacking in works by more timid authors. My only complaint is that his other books in this Millenim series aren't available in English for immediate purchase-- the last time I felt this way about characters (especially Lisbeth Salander) was when I read Harry Potter.
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