Changes

|title=The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

|author=Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)

|genre=Crime

|summary=A disgraced financial journalist and a legally incompetent computer hacker join forces to solve a forty-year-old mystery. An atmospheric and enthralling crime novel with a cast of strong characters. Recommended.

|rating=4.5

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|publisher= Quercus

|date=January 2008

|isbn=978-1847242532

|sort=Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The

}}

The hero of ''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'', Mikael Blomkvist, is a financial journalist and Editor-in-Chief of his own magazine, ''Millennium''. He has built a strong reputation campaigning against corruption and the crooked practices of some of Stockholm's leading businessmen. However, the novel opens just as Blomkvist's latest exposé has ended in a disastrous court case and the journalist's reputation is in tatters.

Well, for once the hype is not entirely unwarranted. It may not be a masterpiece, but ''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'' is a very good read. Despite the sometimes dodgy translation this is a really well-written, well-structured novel that was a real pleasure to read. As with many Scandinavian crime novels, there is an atmospheric sense of place, which Larsson achieves with ease. The characterisation, though, is strong and particularly well handled. I sometimes feel that the people who live in crime novels do things for no other reason than because the plot dictates it. That is not the case in this novel, where all the key players are drawn with skill and some deftness. One or two of the characters (not least Lisbeth Salander, the Tattooed Girl herself) could so easily have become caricatures or worse. But Larsson gives them a multi-layered depth that not only makes them real but also makes the reader ''care'' about them. Even though it is over 500 pages long, I was pretty much gripped throughout this novel. Recommended.

{{toptentext|list=Top Ten Crime Novels}}

{{commenthead}}