What makes this a good read? In a word, complexity. One main character, Mikael Blomkvist, the 42- year- old writer and publisher of a Swedish financial magazine, Millennium, has just been fined and sentenced to 3 months in prison for libeling a powerful businessman. Shortly after, Henrik Vanger, a famous industrialist, contacts him to investigate the decades-old disappearance of 16-year-old Harriet Vanger . Before making the offer to employ Blomkvist, Vanger has had the disgraced publisher vetted by Milton Security. The investigator who completes the report is Lisbeth Salander.
Lisbeth Salander is a mysterious twenty-something private investigator who is brilliant, but unusual to say the least. Years before, she had been designated as mentally incompetent by the state, necessitating the assignment of a government-appointed guardian. She has learned to control her destructive impulses through a system she calls "Consequence Analyses" taught to her as a coping mechanism by her first guardian. When he has a debilitating stroke, she is assigned a new, and totally different guardian. It is this guardian with whom she learns the true value of "Consequence Analyses".
The Vanger family itself is cloaked in mystery. As Blomkvist tries to unravel the mystery of Harriet's disappearance, he meets Lisbeth Salander who is conducting her own investigation into his libel trial. Both struggle to make sense of their own lives and, at the same time, they work together to find answers to the Vanger mystery. They discover much more than they had anticipated, information on all fronts, putting them in extreme danger while juggling personal, ethical and moral dilemmas.
What reaction did this reader have on closing the book for the final time? The desire to read the second in the series, The Girl Who Played with Fire, available now in paperback. And finally to read the third novel of the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, published by Alfred A. Knopf in hardback this year.
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