Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
First of a trilogy "The Millenium-series" introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multi pierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable super hacker.
A 24-year-old computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, sports an assortment of tattoos and body piercings but is oddly emotionally dissociated with others and maybe afflicted with Asperger Syndrome or something of the like. She has been under state guardianship in her native Sweden since she was thirteen. She supports herself by doing deep background investigations for Dragan Armansky, who, in turn, worries the anorexic-looking Lisbeth Salander is "the perfect victim for anyone who wished her ill." Salander may look fourteen and stubbornly shun social norms, but she possesses the inner strength of a determined survivor. She sees more than her word processor page in black and white and despises the users and abusers of this world. She won't hesitate to exact her own unique brand of retribution against small-potatoes bullies, sick predators, and corrupt magnates alike.
Financial journalist Carl Mikael Blomkvist has just been convicted of libeling a financier and is facing a fine and three months in jail. Blomkvist, after a Salander-completed background check, is summoned to a meeting with semi-retired industrialist Henrik Vanger whose far-flung but shrinking corporate empire is wholly family owned. Vanger has brooded for 36 years about the fate of his great niece, Harriet. Blomkvist is expected to live for a year on the island where many Vanger family members still reside and where Harriet was last seen. Under the cover story that he is writing a family history, Blomkvist is to investigate which family member might have done away with the teenager.
On the surface this seems to be a cold-case but quickly develops into layers of hatred and corruption against women and men. Each section has a kind of statistic about crimes against women in Sweden. But we learn so much more. I really found this book fascinating and can't wait to read the other 2. I'm wondering if the 2 other books will hold up to this one.
Interesting side-note. The author, Stieg Larsson died just after submitting all 3 manuscripts in 2004. Already book 1 has been made into a movie under the original title "Man who hated women", interestingly enough in Spanish. Considering the original book was in Swedish, I expected it to have been done in that language first.