The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

This was a book I sort of wanted to stay away from. I have this thing with books where when everyone else is reading them, I don't want to. What is that? Then my boss lent it to me, so I read it and I will admit, I was hooked. Although, I think this book could have been better. It took a long ass time to get into it. And then there were two endings. There was an ending to the story that was interesting and then there was an end to the story that sucked. Basically the author sidetracked at the beginning, got to the meat of the story and tied it all up, then went back to the beginning.

It was a super fast read and the story really engrossed you. I could not put this book down, I just had to find out what happened. So, that's something. However, I was a little bit annoyed at how our hero Mikael Blomkvist figured the murder mystery out. It was pretty far fetched not to mention the fact that the author really telegraphed the ending. From the beginning it was clear that the answer to it all was in the pictures.

If you haven't read the book, you are probably confused. Here's a recap without giving too much away. The hero is an author who has recently been shamed. A rich guy offers him solace in writing a family history in small town Sweden. In addition he asks him to help solve a mystery of his niece's death. So, the author hero goes digging and the murderer gets angry and starts coming after him. Then this young woman enters the picture and begins helping our author hero with his investigation. Is it love between the two or just raw sex? Who can tell? Then they figure it out! The mystery, not the casual sex, because really who can ever figure that out? Elementary! Now comes the serious danger. Don't worry, our heroes always live! Then we go back to the author hero's shame and delve deeper into the young woman...then cliffhanger! Because there's another book and this author knows that true money is in a series.

Here's the real thing. Has anyone else looked into the story of the author's death? It's actually super interesting and mysterious on it's own. He planned writing at least 7 books, I think, but the publisher only has the first three. Major bummer. The books only get better.

So, 3/5 or 7/10 stars. I just wasn't impressed with the beginning and was so annoyed that they ruined the real ending by ending with the beginning. You dig?