The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg LarssonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
After hearing about the huge European sales of the book, the blockbuster movie, recommendations from friends and the untimely death of the author, I decided to dive into “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. In summary, the plot concerns a journalist with nothing to lose who is hired by a rich old guy to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his niece 40 years earlier. Fortunately, I was told that the first one hundred pages are slow but then the plot really picks up. I can safely say that based on the plot summary I wrote above you can start reading half way through the book and still understand what's going on. In fact, my paperback book had 644 pages and the main protagonist didn't even meet the title character until page 322, exactly halfway through. I don't think it was until almost page 400 that the sleuths find the first clue regarding the niece. Seriously, the first half of the book is really boring and has a lot of uninteresting information. The pace quickens around the half-way point but the main intrigue stops about 100 pages short of the end. The reason is that the author has to tie up all the boring stuff he talked about in the beginning. For me this could have been written in 250 pages and I would already be done with the sequel. Another disappointing aspect of the book is that the characters are somewhat interesting, but not sympathetic. I walked away not liking any of the characters. Even though I have many problems with the book, I thought it was well written and I read the book fairly quickly. I didn't mind the Swedish names as much as I thought. I thought the suspenseful part of the plot was interesting and highly compelling. I am interested in seeing the movie, just to see how well this translates to film. However, I'm not in a hurry to jump into the sequel and the threequel to this thriller. I am leery of spending so much time again on a book where only one third was suspenseful. View all my reviews >>
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