Books Reviews: The Girl
With The Dragon Tattoo (Who Played With Fire, and Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest),
By Stieg Larsson
The Premise:
Ace reporter, Mikael Blomkvist, investigates a mystery that
brings him into contact with Lisabeth Salander, a reclusive computer hacker
with an even more mysterious past.
The Good:
Mr. Larsson keeps the action moving and creates an
impressive amount of fleshed-out characters along the way. He isn’t one to shy
away from putting those characters in uncomfortable or even dangerous
situations and that makes for a gripping yarn. The writing style is
easy-to-follow and descriptive, but not laborious. While this isn’t
particularly challenging literature, it is robust enough for a hearty summer’s
read.
The Bad:
Dragon Tattoo has
several explicit/graphic scenes that are not for the faint of heart or
squeamish. After that, Fire and Hornet’s Nest are a bit easier to
take—there is still violence, but it’s more in the vein of action-adventure. Because
of the length of the books, some of the subplots seem rather unnecessary (there
is a subplot in the third book that seems like it was created just to give one
character something to do).
The Verdict:
Read ‘em. If you can handle some explicit violence early on,
you’ll be rewarded with a fully realized story that moves briskly though its three
acts.
