Angie Windheim

The Lit Ladies Book Club picked a murder mystery for January and I loved it. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was an extremely fun read filled with juicy characters, family drama, corporate corruption and, of course, the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a 16-year-old corporate heiress that disappeared 40 years ago. Was she murdered, was it an accident, was it suicide or is she even really dead?

Our flawed heroes in the story are Mikael Blomkvist, a dashing journalist trying to recover from a story that blew up and landed him with a libel conviction, and Lisbeth Salander, a very dysfunctional, hard-edged young woman with a sharp brain and even sharper attitude.  Funded by the patriarch of the Vanger clan, they join forces to solve the mystery of Harriet Vanger and get a whole lot more than they bargained for.  The story is almost entirely set in Sweden, as that is the origin of the author.  Some of the Swedish names and phrases can slow the pace at first, but you get used to it fairly quickly.

Should be a great discussion at Book Club tonight. I’ll be very surprised if The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo failed to hook anyone in the group.  This is the first book in the Millennium trilogy. Brian is reading #3 and has enjoyed them all. Guess I know what I want to read next 🙂

I’ll be sure to also discuss tonight that the author has his own interesting story. Larsson was himself a journalist like the main character and many say these are kind of like fantasy novels for him. Sadly, Larsson died just two months before the first book of the trilogy was released to the public. We’ll never get to dig further into the author’s mind.

And, for a bit of intrigue, you can visit the Steig Larsson website and dig into the controversy surrounding a potential fourth book in the series. It’s also interesting to read about his background which explains the anti-fascism and Nazi elements to the story.