The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

Stylistically quirky and even somewhat undisciplined, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is all over the place really. It's a thriller, a murder mystery, a serial killer investigation, an exposé on financial crime and journalism, a baroque family drama, a commentary on modern Swedish society and on the abuse of women, and it's a romantic drama. To be fair, Larsson does well to bring all these elements together into a fairly gripping drama, even if some of the developments go a little over-the-top, but the novel is over-long, sprawling and badly in need of editing, full of eccentric touches and veering off into irrelevant areas.

It's the creation and exploration of the two intriguing characters of Blomkvist and Salander that hold everything together, but other than that, there is little that is exceptional about the crime plot and its investigation, nothing certainly to justify the book’s surprising popularity. The main revelations and exposés of both the murder and the financial investigations should be big set pieces, but they fall strangely flat. There are definite failings with the book and it doesn't live up to the reputation that precedes it, but The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo manages nonetheless to be a compelling read.

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