Book Review- Stieg Larsson- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Stieg Larsson- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Penguin Books 2008) 3 Stars

Mikael Blomkvist, a once famous journalist, has just been sentenced to one month in prison when an enemy sets him up. Now Henrik Vanger would like to hire him to look into the disappearance of his younger sister Harriet Vanger, who has been missing for forty years. Henrik suspects that a member of his family is guilty and he wants Mikael to find out who is responsible. As Mikael digs he turns up evidence that had been overlooked in the original investigation and he must bring in someone else, Lisbeth Salander. Working as a team they face danger and dig deep for evidence that will crack this case wide open.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo came highly recommended, so I picked this up with high hopes. Sadly I found it extremely boring for a few hundred pages, I was told to press on for it got much better, and they were right, it did, more on that later. I found the author to be very wordy and was dismayed by all the extra information that could have been summed up in a couple of paragraphs rather than a couple of pages. I feel that this book could have been cut down from being over eight hundred pages to about four-five hundred. This would have made it much more exciting and it may have gripped me more. Instead I ended up with 350 pages of bore, 300 of interesting enough to keep me reading, and about 200 pages of gripping. The gripping section was really good and the only thing that saved this book, although it was way too short and I fear that many will not make it through to that section awake. I know there are many who enjoy this book, but alas I am not one of them. I guess you will just have to read it yourself and make your own judgement.

I would like to wish all of my readers a great Good Friday.

For more of my reviews check out my website, www.tonypeters.webs.com

Tony Peters

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