Last year I noticed an interesting cover picture in a bookshop. Girl
sporting a dragon tattoo, on a book that was called exactly the same;
"The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", by the late Swedish journalist
Stieg
Larsson. I have a thing for dragon tattoos and despite this cheesy
title I got interested. I researched a little on-line and found that
it's a story about a journalist and a female hacker (the tattooed
girl, imagine that), hired to write a biography for an old Swedish
industrialist. Cheesy title and tattooed female hackers sounded too
cheap and I didn't buy in.
In October I noticed that they made a movie based on the book, called
"Men who hate women", which also turned out to be the
original title of the book (that dragon thing was a result of the
English translation). Movie was good, a thriller with dark northern
atmosphere, a detective story and a mystery all in one. I immediately
knew the book is excellent and that I made a mistake. Best selling
book of the decade in Europe, and the whole trilogy (which it is a
part of) an international phenomenon.
The actual story is much more deeper than it can be depicted in just 2
hours of film. It works on so many levels; corporate world and
journalism, serial murders and a dark mystery. Interestingly all that
is only an introduction to a deeper story about the girl with the
dragon tattoo. The second book took a surprising turn for me, I had no
idea the girl will become the center of attention. But let's stay with
the first book a bit more. As much as I liked the book and considered
it a good story there were some small things that almost ruined it for
me. Larsson (being a reputable journalist) paid so much attention to
detail that I can't understand some (what I consider) huge errors in
judgment. To start with the obvious, he nailed the basic tech but when
it came to hacking he had to go out and invent stuff. Some things he
wrote about are much more complicated than what is already out there,
completely unnecessary. In fact I've read an article in a Swedish
newspaper where they asked a security consultant about hacks from all
three books. Guy laughed on some counts. One telephone call and you
could have it all worked out in detail, for the whole series. Then
there is Dragan Armansky: born in Croatia by an Armenian
father and a Bosnian-Muslim mother, somehow ending up with a Serbian
nationality (as registered by the immigration office). What is going
on here, a Korean-Mexican with a French passport would sound more
convincing.
I was glad that things started revolving around the girl in
the second book, titled
"Girl
who played with fire". When I least expected it some Russian spies
turned up and again added some (more than) fantastic elements to the
story, but by then I was more or less immune to these mass-market
elements. I kept going because of the girl, which was a fascinating
character. You could object to a lot of things regarding her, but
along with the (sometimes) unconvincing hacking only thing that
bothered me was
her photographic
memory. It is a myth. Why couldn't she have "extraordinary
memory", which would be plausible for a person with asperger (or
something like the syndrome, which is suggested she has)? Second book
tells us much more about the girl. She is wanted by the police, and
while she hacks their networks to stay one step ahead we get to learn
a lot about her past. Again Larsson's story works on many levels. The
journalist from book one is also back, this time working on a story
about sex trafficking. The end of the book leaves things unresolved
and leaves you desperately wanting more.
The
air castle that blew up is the third and final book of the series
(which is also known as the Millennium trilogy). It ties up
all the loose ends from previous books and gives a nice closure, I
consider it a good ending. The girl was a great character and it would
be nice to see here once again, but unfortunately the author died just
as he completed the third book. Last week I watched an interview with
the Croatian publisher of the series. He just got back from Sweden and
said that there are rumors that Larsson wanted to write a bigger
series, some 6 or 7 books. In fact he said that Larsson already had an
outline for the fifth book on his computer. I guess we will
never know, but these books we do have definitely deserve your
attention.