BookwormBy John Andrews
This month I have a really exciting offering for Newsletter readers as I thought, with all the doom and gloom about, we all need a bit of cheering-up.
Every now and then, I take a rest from biographies and learned history books and enter the world of ‘whodunnit’.
No better example can possibly be provided than by Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, published in 2008 by Maclehose Press, an imprint of Quercus.
Stieg Larsson was born in Sweden in 1954 and was a very successful journalist until he wrote what became a trilogy of crime novels that have already sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. Sadly, soon after delivering his three crime novels to his publisher, he unexpectedly died and, therefore, was never to see the worldwide phenomenon his work has become.
Beautifully translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoos is an exceptionally ambitious debut novel and a potent package. It boasts a timely overriding theme of corporate corruption at the very highest level, a remarkable punk heroine, a fascinating portrait of some aspects of modern Sweden and a steadily accelerating narrative of great verve and brio.
The industrialist, Henrik Vanger, is tormented by the loss of a teenager years earlier. Mikael Blomkvist, a corporate affairs journalist delves into the Vangers’ past to attempt to uncover the truth behind the unsolved mystery. He is assisted in the investigation by Lisbeth Salander, the abused, enigmatic, delinquent and dangerous security specialist.
This is a very Nordic, brooding type of novel which scores on every front – characters, story, atmosphere and translation.
If you want a lift out of the constant everyday gloom at home, go out and buy this extraordinary novel, but beware, the sequel – The Girl who Played with Fire – is a must also!