Stieg Larson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Review

The director of the film of the same name, (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) David Fincher, while on location in Stockholm, shot the character, Lisbeth Salander, walking down wide and long steps outside in the city centre. True to form for Fincher, there were several takes. During the shoot, many people gathered to watch the making of the short scene. Fincher had a few concerns: the film had already been made in the story's native Sweden, and the protagonist has really become an important icon in the Swedish cultural landscape. After the shoot, the assistant director reported to Fincher, that, the crowd were all smiling. Fincher was relieved: the local Swede's approved.

Stieg Larsson has also become a cultural legend in Sweden. He is the author of the “Millennium Trilogy”, but for some, he was more importantly a “crusading journalist”, engaged in exposing corporate and political corruption. The man's focus of attack was the right-wing extremism in Sweden, revealing their power to just about get away with anything. These crimes include drugs, political subterfuge and the massive slave trade of women and children. Larsson's untimely death in November of 2004, was certainly not without controversy. (He died of a heart attack running up ten flights of stairs to his office) The Trilogy sold millions, and he was the best second selling author in the world in 2008, behind Khaled Hosseini. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo kicked started the entire phenomenon that continues to this day.

Larsson created a well-crafted crime thriller, however, the character of Lisbeth Salander, turns this crime novel into something special. Salander is an enigma. A young woman in her twenties, whose appearance would make Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols proud: piercings, several tattoos, slick and spiky hair and the attitude of a born Punk. She is a social outcast, has trouble relating to people in general; but this girl has a secret, Salander is a genius.

Co- Protagonist in the novel is Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist working for the magazine Millennium, hired by one of Sweden's leading Industrialist families to solve a 40 year old mystery. Salander and Blomkvist respective destiny’s bring them together – an unlikely mystery solving duo, which makes this novel so unique and so good.
 

Dragon” is an excellent novel and those criticising its occasional literary cliches', are simply knit-picking, as this novel and the following two instalments, sold more copies than the entire population of Australia. As the aphorism goes, “By their fruits you shall know them.” And this novel is certainly a bountiful and wonderful fruit in story telling.