#03 to #05 - The Millennium series by Stieg Larsson
At first glance these books seem to be run-of-the-mill thrillers, which was why I put off reading it for so long despite the hype. In many ways they are: the first two are standard whodunnit murder cases revolving around the protagonists Blomkvist, a journalist, and Salander, a teenage hacker; the third ventures into national conspiracies and courtroom scenes. Nothing groundbreaking here… it seems.
For a start the narrative does not disappoint. My personal favourite was The Girl Who Played with Fire; even though it starts off sluggish, it picks up soon enough and ends in a rather unexpected twist of events (not without plot holes, though ;)). The author plays with perspectives like a pro, shifting between multiple POVs that, while at times bordering on draggy, results in an extremely engaging (and movie-friendly) trilogy that delivers the drama and suspense where it is due.
The last time she saw him she was standing on a platform in the tunnelbana at Gamla Stan and he was sitting in the train on his way downtown. She had stared at him for a whole minute and decided that she did not have a grain of feeling left, because it would have been the same as bleeding to death.
- Excerpt from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Blomkvist comes across as the customary accidental hero, with all the charms of James Bond sans the action (he gets one-hit-KOed first thing in every fist fight). I actually thought of him as a caricature, more than anything else; it is hard to take him seriously when most of his chapters end with him sleeping with one woman or another. The one thing that stands out, though, is undoubtedly Lisbeth Salander, whose array of capabilities and striking non-conformist personality easily make her one of the most memorable characters I’ve ever encountered. That alone is enough to set these books apart as some of the best in this genre.
