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  Larrson died in November of 2004, leaving three unpublished books.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.

My wife and I are both currently reading The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, a financial-crime mystery of sorts, on our Kindles.  The book is part 1 of a 3 part series written by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson.  Books 1 and 2, The Girl Who Played with Fire, are available on Kindle and for purchase in bookstores in the US.  Book 3, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, is not available in the US despite the fact that the series is very popular and the book was published in 2007.  In Europe the book is widely available, and is even on the UK Kindle site.  US citizens cannot buy it from the UK Kindle site.  Why is this book being held back from America in such a contrived fashion?  The publisher is trying to create demand for the book, which will be released to the US market in the spring of 2010.  There is just one problem with this plan.  Its easy to get the book.  US booksellers are importing it from Europe.  And digital versions of the book are easy to find, for free, online.  Theoretically I could have already downloaded it, without paying for it, and it could theoretically be sitting on our Kindles right now waiting to be read.

I ran into this same phenomenon tonight with a new show I wanted to view but had missed on television, White Collar.  USA and Hulu only offer the last few episodes.  I want to start from the beginning.  So this leaves me with three options.  I can start from the middle of the season (yuck).  I can decide to ignore it until it comes out on DVD and rent it through NetFlix (if I remember to do so).   The third option should be obvious: its dead simple to find this show on any of the popular torrent sights.  Its widely distributed and quickly downloadable.  If I were to theoretically download it, I would assume that it would be commercial free.  USA has just lost out on potential commercial revenue.  Just as the publisher of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest lost out of a sale.

Media companies, whether they are book, movie, television or music publishers, suffer a stupidity tax when they don’t make their items easily available in a digital format online.  This is (almost) 2010.  The internet as been a big thing for about 15 years now.  If a company is too stupid to realize someone can simply download their stuff if they don’t allow it on their site, then I think they incur this tax.  You can argue morality here, but from a purely-business perspective this is just a futile attempt to hold onto the pre-1994 world.

This isn’t Dr. Dre and Metallica fighting Napster, with everyone trying to figure out the realities of this new economy.  Today it shouldn’t even be an issue.  For example, right this moment Metallica’s entire catalog is available online in multiple stores.  Hell, they have a lot of free and pay concert music on their site ready to be downloaded.  They learned the lesson the entire media industry should have learned 10 years ago!

So why haven’t people learned?  I honestly think it is plain-old stupidity.  I think there are old people running companies that just simple don’t get it.  Nothing else can explain the complete lack of business sense in relation to digital media and the Internet.  But there are bright spots.  There are a number of shows with a significant portion of their catalog available, for free, on Hulu.  These companies and Hulu are making advertising money for what amounts to re-runs.

Make it easy for people to do the right thing and they will do the right thing.  If not, then most people are going to do as they please.  We aren’t talking about murder here; people are usually downloading things that are either overpriced or not available.  Digital distribution is easy; there are plenty of pioneers and a lot of great software to support it.  The trail has already been blazed, and there are working business models to be followed.  Digital distribution should be cheap.  Releasing content digitally should at very least save the cost of producing a physical product.

So, I might watch some television on my laptop tonight then settle into bed with my Kindle for some reading.