\nI 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<\/i> series.\n<\/p>\n
\nOne 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.\n<\/p>\n
\nYou 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.\n<\/p>\n
\nSalander 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…\n<\/p>\n
\nThe 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.\n<\/p>\n
\nSo 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.\n<\/p>\n
\nAll 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.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn Swedish: M\u00e4n som hatar kvinnor<\/a>, Flickan som lekte med elden<\/a>, Luftslottet som spr\u00e4ngdes<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nIn English: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<\/i> on Amazon UK<\/a>, Amazon US<\/a>; The Girl Who Played With Fire<\/i> on Amazon UK<\/a>, Amazon US<\/a>; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest<\/i> on Amazon UK<\/a>, Amazon US<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[77,80,215,214,216],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book_review","tag-fiction","tag-millenium","tag-stieg_larsson","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1359,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/1359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}