Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I stayed up until 3:30am last night to finish the book. It was pretty slow going at first. It starts with discussion about financial malfeasance and the first main character that gets a lot of page space is Michael Blomkvist. Um, what about the title character, Lisbeth Salander?

Well, we do meet her but the first third of the book focuses on Michael who loses a lawsuit because of slander or libel or something against a big financial corporation. As I said, slow going.

Then he gets hired to research the family history of the famous corporateVanger family but really to solve the disappearance of Harriet Vanger 40 years ago. There's lots of geneology and it's not easy to remember who's related to who, who hates who and why, and who's dead and who's not. That's the middle third. We also get more about Lisbeth, who is the most interesting character. I know Stieg Larsson wrote a sequel that focuses on Lisbeth, so I'm looking forward to reading that one. I read that Larsson wrote a draft of the sequel before he died. I wonder if the success of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" affected how the ghostwriter or whoever finished writing the sequel.

The book gets better as the murder mystery gets going. And the last third picks up the pace when Lisbeth joins Micheal in the research and we get more about Lisbeth. The last third is what kept me up reading to the end.

The story didn't end the way I thought it would and it was rather bittersweet. Over all, I can see why the book is on the best seller lists.