I honestly don’t understand why this book is so popular.  The original title is “Men Who Hate Women” and it is accurate to the theme of the novel.  For the most part I found it boring; very slow to start, then it got more interesting, was pretty good in the second half and boring again at the end.  Michel Bloomquist (I listened to the audiobook so I have no idea if these spellings are accurate) is a financial journalist for Millennium magazine in Stockholm, Sweden.  He writes an expose about the fraudulent activity of a wealthy industrialist Venestrom.  Bloomquist is accused of libel and sentenced to a couple months in jail.  Between the sentencing and his jail time Bloomquist is invited to a small town to meet with an aging industrialist Vengar.  The majority of the small town are part of the Vengar family and work for the Vengar corporation.  The old man offers Bloomquist a job to write the family history which will be a front for his real work which is to get to the bottom of the mystery of his niece Harriet’s disappearance in 1966.  Bloomquist reluctantly takes the job and moves to the small island town where he begins investigating the family.

Meanwhile there is another important character in the book, the lady where the title of the book comes from. Lizbeth Salander is in her mid-20s, covered in tattoos, is a computer hacker and works as an investigator for a securities company.  One of the company’s clients asked Salander to investigate the background of Michel Bloomquist.  Salander came back with the most thorough report anybody had ever seen.  We also learn a little about Salander’s background as an orphan living with different caretakers and her last one was brutally mean to her, tied her to the bed and forced her to have sex with him  and withheld her own money she earned from the securities company from her.  She does get her revenge on him in a rather dramatic scene.  This is just one small aspect of the theme I mentioned earlier of men who hate women.  It actually gets much worse in the second half with a surprising serial killer and his proclivities for abusing, torturing, and murdering women.

The book didn’t start really getting good for me until Bloomquist and Salander meet up for the first time and end up working together on the Harriet case.  This was toward the second half of the book and what I thought was the most interesting part of the book.  I could care less about Venestrom and his financial frauds.  It took me a couple months to get through the book and I could only stand listening to about 15-30 minutes at a time.  There were maybe a couple nights where it gripped me enough to listen for an hour.

This is the first book in what is known as the Millennium Trilogy. The other two books are The Girl Who Plays With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest.  My mom told me that The Girl Who Plays With Fire is probably the best of the three and is more from Salander’s perspective.  I may or may not get around to reading it.  Finally there are Swedish movies made of this book and maybe one other from the trilogy.  They are currently working on an American movie version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  Stieg Larsson has passed away and did not get to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo become the #1 selling ebook on Amazon.  Still, in my opinion, it wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read.