The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Just finished reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.  It was a Swedish bestseller followed by two sequels, then the author dropped dead just before all three became world-wide bestsellers in English.  So I feel kind of bad saying what I'm about to say.

I think this book sucks.  I think it's sleazy and exploitative.  It presents itself as speaking out on behalf of women who are the subject of violence and abuse, while simultaneously gleefully presenting gruesome details of how these (fictional) women were raped, mutilated and murdered, presumably in order to advance the plot but in my opinion being present for nothing but titillation.

The main male character seems to be some kind of fantasy alter-ego of the author.  He's a brilliant investigative journalist who manages to sleep with all the major female characters thanks to their convenient habit of finding him irresistible and flinging themselves at him.  The main female character seems to be some kind of adolescent wet-dream.  She's a brilliant computer hacker who has a sketchily-depicted case of Asperger's that allows the author to skip over all the gooshy emotional stuff and jump straight into the sack or whatever other action scene is desirable.  Oh, and she rides a motorbike and has heaps of tatts and piercings.  Rad.

By the way, if you're in the midst of writing a novel just for me - I don't consider that computers have much of a role to play in interesting storytelling.  "She then downloaded a special program that let her crack the bad guy's passwords and find out all the secret stuff that she needed to know."  Wow.  I wish I'd thought of that little plot twist.

As you can tell, I feel let down and disappointed.  I expected this book to be something that it's not.  Maybe I'm judging it too harshly because of that.  But if you haven't read it, I wouldn't bust a gut trying.  Having said that, its a world-wide bestseller and has gotten rave reviews.  Maybe rape and mutilation is more popular than I think.