Books: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo



Mikael Blomkvist has been sentenced to prison by the court for defaming the famous industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. Five days before Christman immediately after the sentence is read out, Blomkvist is tired and is at crossroads both in his life and profession. He doesn’t have any energy to fight back. All his life, Blomkvist was an excellent investigative reporter in the financial domain.

Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander an employee of Milton Security meets with a client Dirch Frode along with her boss Dragan Armansky, her boss and CEO of Milton Security. Salander reads out her findings from her investigation on Blomkvist. Salander is very good at unearthing secrets despite her demeanor as a junkie with multiple tattoos including a dragon tattoo.

Based on Salander’s report, Blomkvist is invited into the home of Henrik Vanger, Frode’s boss and retired head of Vanger companies. There, Henrik has a pretext and a real objective for Blomkvist. The pretext is to write a autobiography of Henrik while the real objective is to solve the disappearance of his favorite grand-niece, Harriet. Harriet has been missing for 36 years!

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is written by Stieg Larsson and is the first book in the Millennium Trilogy. Larsson weaves a mystery very early in the book and thereby hooks us. The events occurs in a time span of little over an year starting from a few days before Christmas and ending a few days after the next Christmas. In this tumultuous year, the lead protagonists undergo changes both in personal and professional lives. They also travel across continents briefly to uncover the secrets. The books is divided into four parts – Incentive, Consequence Analyses, Mergers and Hostile Takeover. The epilogue is aptly called Final Audit.

A family that has a lot of secrets in the cupboard combined with a disappearance nearly 4 decades above provide an excellent premise. How does the investigators solve the mystery, where most of the leads have been overwritten by sands of time, makes the story racy and chilling. When the secret is revealed, the audience are shocked and disturbed like the main protagonists. Stieg’s main theme is violence and abuse on women. All the women in his book has a troubled past. He also touches upon the anti-Semitism that is active yet dormant.

There are a lot of real sick men in this book. So if you do not have the stomach for pain and dominance (with a sexual flavour), keep away from this book. If otherwise, you can read this. It is an excellent thriller. The book is set in Sweden. So it refers to Swedish companies and Swedish celebrities. It is better to be near computer too google these when you are reading this book.

Picture Courtesy:Wikipedia

Tags: Books,Stieg Larsson,Blomkvist,Salander,Dragon Tattoo

Comments

  1. hahh i esp liked the last para..

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  2. seems like a gripping read. Are there 4 different books in this series or are all the four plots compiled in a single book?

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  3. @Ramesh - :)

    @Sujata - There are three parts and this is the first. Yes, it is gripping.

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