It took me some time to get to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Fiction this popular tends to make my nose turn up in literary snobbishness. Shame on me! This most famous entrant in the genre of Nordic Noir is not only excellent and suspenseful, it is icy, passionate, terrifying and thrilling, traits which, when blended into a single book, can only please its readers.
Though this effort by Stieg Larsson is primarily an investigation into an old murder which haunts an eminent, Swedish family, a thick vein of social critique elevates the piece into rarified air. Mr. Larsson, who spent many years as a journalist uprooting truth in the dark corners of Swedish society, does not mute his voice here, speaking quite clearly through his cynical and yet passionate protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, himself a journalist. Blomkvist, who is tricked into disgrace after he pursues a truth inconvenient to powerful forces inside Swedish society, is at a low ebb when the powerful patriarch of a Swedish, industrialist family contacts him in hopes that he might turn his investigative talents to solving the 40 year old murder of his beloved daughter. Though such an investigation offends Blomkvist's Leftist sensibilities, he agrees to pursue the matter, enlisting the aid of an unlikely sidekick who transforms an interesting and inventive story into an instant classic.
Lisbeth Salander is one of those characters, a creature of such page-burning intensity that it's a wonder she hasn't combusted the book. If Blomkvist is Larsson himself, Salander is the main thrust of his social criticism for she is the violent and possibly murderous product of a corrupted foster system haunted by some truly terrifying perverts. Salander, whose vengeance won't fail in putting the reader's jaw on the floor, transfixes with her cold, almost autistic lack of affect. Her vengeful heart is paired up with a logician's brain which excels at computer hacking, a talent crucial to Blomkvist's investigation.
Mr. Larsson won't win any literary awards for his prose, the stiffness of which may also be the product of the translation from the original Swedish, but his characters are wonderfully alive. They and the core mystery, propel this story of darkness and vengeance towards a fantastic conclusion. Never have there been two unlikelier heroes, and yet it is the eccentricities of Blomkvist and Salander that captivate. For good measure, Mr. Larsson adds a dash of scandalous romance between the two, seeming to delight in the fact that Blomkvist is old enough to be Salander's father. But then it is clear that Mr. Larsson loves to play with and prey upon the modesty of his readers.
I've ruminated long on the exceptionalism of this novel, trying to decipher its popularity. For even taking together all its virtues, there are warts here, the elementary prose, the cartoonish villains. There are far better books in the crime genre which have only achieved a fraction of Tattoo's fame. I have two theories. First, the unconventionality of the heroes cannot but enchant. A middle-aged, Leftist journalist burdened by cynicism and facing up to the end of his career, and a computer-hacking, pint-sized rage'a'holic with no morality and no conscience? As a team investigating a murder? It's insane, but it completely works for those of us altogether fed up with James Bond heroes and their bimboish girlfriends. Secondly, despite the graphicness of some of its scenes, Tattoo has a kind of elegance about its central murder. There are no dismembered girls, or blood-thirsty cannibals here. In fact, Mr. Larsson is able to create tension from a story that is remarkably bloodless by the standards of the genre which is all-too-often consumed by voyeuristic abandonment. It's a story about a 40 year old murder, the ultimate cold case. And yet the money, the corruption, the power and the greed all come together to step in for gory detail. There's an admirable grace in this that should not be ignored by authors of the genre.
A great read that is both pulpy and political. Such a creature is rare and, thus, should be treasured. (4/5 Stars)
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