I discovered, in some weekend supplement or free newspaper or something, that Stieg Larsson was the world’s second best selling author last year. And I barely knew what books he had written – something in the crime genre, which I’m normally not at all interested in. But someone who sells that well is a phenomenon worth reading just for the sake of being informed, so I decided to read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.

One evening Eric came home with all three books and I got started. Read the first book in two days, during which I spent every free moment reading. Started on the second book straight after I finished #1, and then started #3 immediately after #2, and read until 2AM just so I wouldn’t have to wait until the morning to finish it.

You can easily find plot summaries for all three books on the web if you’re interested. To put it briefly, the books are about Michael Blomkvist (middle-aged crusading journalist full of righteous anger about economic crime etc) and Lisbeth Salander (punkish lone-wolf genius hacker girl) who solve mysteries and bring bad guys to justice.

Salander becomes more and more of a superhero, less and less believable. A socially inept loner suddenly impersonates a rich lady speaking German with a Norwegian accent? Digging herself out of a grave after being shot in the head? Come on…

The first book is a quiet, calm mystery story, where Michael tries to solve a decades-old missing person case (abandoned long ago by the police, but not by the people involved). The second book is more of a detective story, with police and motorcycle gangs – ups the pace and adds action and violence. The third book adds political conspiracy theories and turns into a semi-thriller.

So the series is a kind of spiral, escalating in speed and level of action, which was a bit of a disappointment for me. I got hooked by the first book, and wasn’t entirely happy about how the books shifted towards more action, more people and a larger scene. One of the redeeming qualities for the later books was that Lisbeth got more space, and she is more fun than Michael.

All three books are entertaining, full of suspense and memorable characters. The language is hard-boiled and the writing generally no-frills, with little effort wasted on scenery etc, as is standard for the genre. But it flows smoothly and has a lot of energy. Some reviewers complain about the pages wasted on diversions and off-topic ramblings, but in my opinion they add to the books’ charm. I liked the rough edges. Alltogether, lots of fun.

In Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor, Flickan som lekte med elden, Luftslottet som sprängdes.

In English: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Amazon UK, Amazon US; The Girl Who Played With Fire on Amazon UK, Amazon US; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest on Amazon UK, Amazon US.