It's an odd crime thriller that keeps its two principal detectives from meeting for 250 pages, an even odder one that simply interrupts the action for two months while one of those detectives serves a short prison sentence. But they do things differently in Sweden, it seems, and the constant awareness that we're dealing with a culture that's subtly different from America's is one of the things I liked about this book.
Our protagonists are Mikael Blomkvist, a 40-ish financial journalist who's just been convicted of libeling a prominent businessman (thus that prison sentence), and Lisbeth Salander, a 20-ish genuis hacker with a serious lack of social skills. Due to his libel conviction, Mikael is forced to take an extended leave of absence from the magazine where he works, and is offered an investigative job by the elderly Henrik Vanger, whose family has long been a power in Swedish industry.
Some 40 years ago, Henrik's niece, Harriet, disappeared from a family reunion and was never seen again. Her disappearance is a variation of sorts on classic locked-room mysteries, as there's only one road onto the family's island, and it was completely blocked by a major traffic accident at the time. Henrik has been obsessed with the case ever since, and hopes that Mikael's investigative skills will turn up evidence that he's somehow overlooked.
Mikael eventually hires Lisbeth as his assistant; it takes quite a while, though, for Larsson to work her into the main plot, which is a bit of a drawback, because she's the book's most interesting character. Once they're teamed up, though, Mikael and Lisbeth are a fine pair, and their relationship develops in ways I hadn't expected.
The mystery is a fine one, with a variety of loathsome suspects in the Vanger family, and a satisfying solution. I was a bit distracted by the Swedish names; there are eight or nine suspects to keep track of, and I kept thinking that I'd be remembering them better if they were named Bob and Susan and Frank instead of Gottfried and Anita and Harald.
Larsson finished three novels in this series, but died of a heart attack at a relatively young age before the first was published. The three books have been best-sellers throughout Europe; the second (The Girl Who Played With Fire) will be published in the US this summer. It's reportedly even better than the first, and I'm looking forward to it very much.
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