A friend at work recommended this book to me. It's the first installment of a three-part series from a best-selling author who was only published posthumously.
The book is a little more mystery than I have been into lately and I wasn't sure how into it I was in the first few chapters but it did quickly grip me and there were a few parts that I had to stay up reading until 2AM because for the life of me, I COULD NOT put it down.
The book is set in Sweden and apparently the Swedish name for the book actually translates into "Men who Hate Women" (though seemingly off, the two titles both work for the book).
The book starts out following financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist who was found guilty of libeling a very crooked business man. Out of the ashes of this court case, Mikael gets a strange request from an old patriarch who is head of a twisted family and a huge, but failing, business empire - Henrik Vanger. Vanger wants Mikael to use his journalist skills to secretly find out who killed his beloved niece 30 odd years ago, under the cover of writing Vanger's autobiography. It's only secret because Vanger suspects a large majority of his family of being the culprit.
The girl with a dragon tattoo is a separate story line for a long time in the book. Lisbeth Salander, though in her mid-20s, is a ward of the state and considered mental. Despite this (and because of it) she is an amazing researcher and was actually the one to do the background work on Mikael when Vanger wanted to hire him.
Lisbeth was a very interesting character - both cagey and crazy all wrapped up into a fascinating package. I feel that the majority of the books I read, I read from a fully sane person's point of view and though I think a lot of Lisbeth's "insanity" is a result of her history and circumstances - how she looks at the world and adapts to it, seems insane to me but made me actually she her logical side--it was a really cool effect.
The book is the first in a three part series so I expected for of a dangle at the end but the case itself got wrapped up, the only dangle was the personal relationship between Mikeal and Lisbeth. I really liked the book but I'm curious if the next three books will just be the same type of mystery story around their frustrating story line (a la Angles and Demons and The Da Vinci Code).
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