The Book Report: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  - talk about a page turner!

Main Characters:

• Mikael Blomkvist (handsome journalist)
• Lisbeth Salander (coolest hacker)
• Vanger (old rich guy who knows how to get what he wants)
• The Vangers (a well established Sweedish family with a lot of skeletons in the closet)

Plot:

• Who done it? Who killed Harriet Vanger?
• How do you prove that you really didn't slander a very rich entrepreneur without revealing your source? Specially if it's a source that may have lied to you?

Random thoughts:

• Little did I know that according to the wiki, Larson witnessed a gang rape of a young girl named Lisbeth when he was 15 and didn't do anything about it.
• He never forgave himself and wrote three manuscripts that bring the issue of violence against women to the forefront.
• He was a publisher that worked at a political magazine and he passed away in 2004, prior to publishing the tree manuscripts that make up the trilogy.
• The book is VERY graphic and disturbing in some parts. A couple of nights I wished I had never started it because I wanted to know who the serial killer was, ASAP. I wanted to get that squared away!
• Some hacker stuff was semi-explained, it's always interesting reading tech-y stuff. I always find it so amusing to watch shows like NCIS because some of the "searches" or things they hack into in 30 seconds is soooo off the map.
• After reading some of the reviews on BNN, I was surprised by how many people didn't like it. I guess I could see their point that the male lead, Blomkvist, was kind of lack-luster. What's funny is I actually thought of him as a supporting character to Lisbeth, who I thought kind of ran the show.

Questions

• Have you read this book and would you recommend it?
• Do you think Blomkvist was set up to publish a faulty report? I never got the reasoning behind this if he was - did I miss something?
• Did you know right away who did it? I always had a feeling it could be that person, but I mainly thought it was because they were jealous of the relationship between Harriet and Vanger

Overall, a good read and I'm planning on reading the second book as soon as it's downloadable from the library, I'm on the waiting list!