Swedish journalist Stieg Larrson wrote novels, for fun, in his spare time. Larrson died in November of 2004, leaving three unpublished books. These were the only novels known to have been written by the man, and they have received many awards and accolades in Europe after their posthumous publishing. Since their translation to English they have enjoyed great success in the English speaking world as well. Only the first two books have been released in The United States, though it is not very difficult to obtain a copy of the third online.
The Millennium Trilogy follows the exploits of twenty-something, anti-social hacker Lisbeth Salander and middle-aged, controversial reporter Mikael Blomkvist. The duo find themselves united in the first book to solve a 30 year old murder mystery, but the plot thickens from there. The second and third books each tell a story of their own while also telling an overarching story, and bring to conclusion a lot of themes and unresolved issues from the first book.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in the trilogy. I found this book to be the best of the bunch, which shouldn’t take anything away from the other books. Dragon introduces us to a rich set of characters and to locations that are unfamiliar. The settings in the book are almost exclusively in Sweden, and Larrson goes into some detail about the cities, towns, transportation, restaurants, and general ambiance there. The characters are well developed and interesting. The two lead characters both have similar attitudes, and express these attitudes in very different ways. All of this is stacked on top of a rather interesting murder mystery.
The Girl Who Played with Fire continues on with the characters about a year after the end of Dragon. Fire continues with many of the themes established in the first book, and jumps into some of the more interesting teasers left hanging. We soon find the roles our lead characters took in the first book reversed. This book quickly turns into another murder mystery, but that is not what is really going on. Blomkvist and Salander separately race to solve related portions of the same mystery, although this time it isn’t so much a mystery for Salander, but history. The book has a couple of interesting plot twists at the end, and while it resolves the central mystery of the book it does leave at least one character in serious jeopardy.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest concludes the trilogy, and finishes the overarching story started in Fire. Again Blomkvist and Salander are fighting against unknown adversaries, this time with a more united front. At the end of the book Larrson leaves the characters ready for more battles together, and one can only imagine what would have come from his mind had he lived. However, this trilogy does tell a complete overall story and closes all the loose threads. In the final analysis its a story about friendship and loyalty between many different characters, but mostly between Salander and Blomkvist.
I recommend the trilogy to anyone that enjoys good fiction. As an avid science and science fiction reader, I am not entirely sure what lured me into reading these books. But I found them all very good reads.
