The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original Swedish title: Män som hatar kvinnor – "Men Who Hate Women") is the first of the bestselling Millenium trilogy by Steig Larsson, all three published posthumously. It is a gripping, spine tingling tale from the genre of crime thriller as much as it is about unleashed attributes of hatred, sex, politics and murders.

The story surrounds a retired octogenarian industrialist, Henrik Vanger, hiring a renowned journalist of Millennium, Mikael 'Kalle' Blomkvist, who happens to have lost a libel case against a business tycoon Hans-Erik Wennerström, to investigate the circumstances of his great-niece's disappearance, Harriet Vanger, about 40 years ago.

Henrik’s possession of evidence against Wennerström coupled with a lucrative offer, 2.4million kronor to be precise, is enough to lure Mikael Blomkvist into signing a yearlong contract with Henrik Vanger. The contract is to write Vanger's family history as cover up for a much deeper, much complex and much more sinister assignment given to him by Henrik.

While in the midst of this, Mikael discovers the “Girl,” Lisbeth Salander, a supposedly social outcast but cunningly intelligent private investigator and a lethal computer hacker, who had done a background check report on him for Henrik Vanger. The two of them later develop an intimate relationship while working together to discover the true nature of this rather horrific case, and equally terrifying, the Vanger Family.

No doubt the novel is a worldwide best seller for all it holds. The story is extremely intriguing and gripping, the characters solid and intertwined together in this cult chronicle that doesn’t let you put the book down. It’s a grave, gruesome and equally interesting account, a real page turner that reveals the other side of Swedish society, the moral debacle, the sexual exploitation of women by men and much more. If you have already heard a lot of hype about the novel, let me add, it totally lives up to it.

Also read about the two sequels: The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest