Stieg Larsson's Trilogy

I am happy to report that I am finally done with Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who trilogy. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; Knopf.) I reviewed Dragon Tattoo in 2008, and said at the time, "The story has everything: a great setting, very human characters, and a plot that becomes more intriguing with every turn of the page." I actually was surprised that the book became such a runaway best seller. It was a solid mystery, but nothing about it seemed destined to move it to the stratosphere.

But I saw the movie earlier this year, and really liked it. There were details in the movie that I hadn't remembered from the first book, so I decided to read the next book to see if those details were explained. Once I was done, I figured I may as well finish the trilogy. This review focuses on the second and third books.

Dragon Tattoo was a tidy little classic "locked room" mystery (though the "room" was actually a remote Swedish island cut off by a closed bridge.) Played with Fire and Hornet's Nest are actually one overly long political thriller separated into two books. Unfortunately, the quality of Larsson's writing decreases with each book. By the time I was about half way through Hornet's Nest, I had to force myself to concentrate. The books moved too slowly, and were filled with long passages that did nothing to further the plot. I defy anyone to find sentences like this interesting: "He got into his Volvo and drove towards the city but turned off to go across Stora Essingen and Grondal into Sodermalm. He drove down Hornsgatan and across to Bellmansgatan via Brannkyrkagatan. He turned left onto Tavastgatan at the Bishop's Arms pub and parked at the corner." And it's not the Swedish street names: substitute Rockville Pike or Main Street and the passage is just as boring. 

The two books concentrate on computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, the young woman referred to in the titles of the three books. (Spoiler alert: if you haven't read either of the first two books, you should probably skip the rest of this paragraph.) Mikael Blomkvist's magazine is about to run an expose on a sex trafficking scandal involving some highly placed Swedish officials when someone murders the reporters working on the story. Lisbeth's fingerprints are on the gun, which belongs to the perverted creep of a lawyer who had been appointed as her guardian years ago. The lawyer is also dead, and all signs point to Salander as a triple murderer.  There are lots of story lines, but the main one is that the Swedish security police have been committing some heinous crimes in their attempts to protect a really sicko Russian defector. The defector turns out to have played a role in Salander's past.

With better editing, the books could have been stronger. The final third of Hornet's Nest is actually quite compelling, but it takes too long to get there.  It is also absurdly over the top when it comes to violence. Once character is shot in the brain but makes a full recovery, and another tries to commit suicide by shooting himself in the face, but does not die. One character is impervious to pain, and when his feet are nailed to a floor with a nail gun, his biggest problem is losing his balance. The violence, particularly that which is perpetrated by men against women, is pretty gratuitous.

It seems that most everyone I know is reading one of Larsson's books right now. Of all the books I've ever reviewed, I think there may have only been one that I knew, absolutely knew, would be a blockbuster, and that was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Certainly, if anyone had ever asked me if I thought The Girl Who series would be crazy popular I would have said it was doubtful. Too bad Larsson died before he could see how the rest of the world (everyone besides me, that is!)  is enjoying his books.