Stieg Larsson

A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age--and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it--who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism--and an unexpected connection between themselves. It's a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a striking novel. Just when I was thinking there wasn't anything new on the horizon, along comes Stieg Larsson with this wonderfully unique story. I was completely absorbed.” —Michael Connelly "I doubt you will read a better book this year.” —Val McDermid Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family. There was no corpse, no witnesses, no evidence. But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone from her own deeply dysfunctional family. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired to investigate, but he quickly finds himself in over his head. He hires a competent assistant: the gifted and conscience-free computer specialist Lisbeth Salander, and the two unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

Book One Of The Millennium Trilogy

Zachary Roberts

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Beatriz Aguiar

Deborah Kerr

Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate.

Arturo Hernández

Even though the first chapters are a bit slow, the novel gets the pacing right after that (the Vanger story is quite messed up) and leaves you wanting to understand more about the past of Lisbeth (and her motives). Definitely will be reading other installments of this series.

edith w.

I tried (twice) to read this heap of rubbish, but I couldn't do it. It just didn't make any sense, the story jumped around from one unsympathetic character to another, and 70 pages in (when I realised I'd been skim-reading for the previous 20), I gave up. 

It's now helping to hold up a broken shelf in a bookcase, so at least it's useful for something.

Haylie

The book started off sort of dull with Blomkvist and his troubles but I kept reading because I wanted to see what happened and what all the hype was about. The book didn't truly get good until Lisbeth Salander became part of the plot. Sometimes the book can drag on with some of Blomkvist's story but it's Salander's story that made me want to keep going. When these two characters finally met and started working together, then I flew through the book, engrossed in their story. All in all, the book does live up to the hype. It's written with excellence and I'm definitely going to keep reading the trilogy.

The first in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family.

The disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, gnaws at her octogenarian uncle, Henrik Vanger. He is determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. He hires crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, recently at the wrong end of a libel case, to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance.

Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old, pierced, tattooed genius hacker, possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age--and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness--assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, an astonishing corruption at the highest echelon of Swedish industrialism--and a surprising connection between themselves.---From publisher description.

''Wildly Suspenseful...an intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller.''---The Washington Post

Izza

The ending always crushes my heart. God, Lisbeth needs a hug.

The Industrialist: Henrik Vanger, head of the dynastic Vanger Corp. is tormented by the loss of a child decades earlier and convinced that a member of his family committed murder.

The Journalist: Mikael Blomkvist delves deep into the Vangers' past to uncover the truth behind the unsolved mystery. But someone else wants the past to remain a secret and will go to any lengths to keep it that way.

The girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Lisbeth Salander, the enigmatic, delinquent and dangerous security specialist, assists in the investigation. A genius computer hacker, she tolerates no restrictions placed upon her by individual, society or the law. 
(back cover)

Gayathri Jinesh

Amazing character development. Impeccable, yet believable plotline.
It does take about the first 30% of the book, to actually get into the story, which was kind of annoying. Still, it was a decent thriller. The drama is what I enjoyed more than the plot twists. I never knew I could admire someone like Salander. Thankfully, there's more of her left. Yay!

Geoff norgrove-humphries

Denise Mina

Leonardo Manco

Andrea Mutti

Mikael and Lisbeth try to dig up the truth as the darkness of the Vanger family threatens to engulf the both of them in this graphic novel adaptation of the novel.

Carol Bailey

Well written. The story moves along well with plenty of intrigue and just enough plot twists to keep you on your toes.

Ana Gonçalves

This book was amazing!! I LOVED the writing style, the characters (especially Lisbeth Salander), the story and the way everything wrapped up in the end. It was so exciting and captivating.

Stephanie Honour

so entertaining! unexpectedly violent at times, should make for an interesting movie...which we conveniently just found on the movie shelf at the house we're renting.

Sepia

Yay! First book read in 2018.

I read this as an audiobook and found it to be a good audiobook. Normally, I have difficulty in listening to audiobooks but not this one! I found this book to be mysterious, and it had me at the edge of my seat. I could distinguish between the different characters when the narrator was talking, so it was easy to understand. It had many twists and turns and I didn't guess them. 

All in all, an excellent read! Or should I say, listen.

Janice Hopper

Years after it was A Big Thing, I finally got around to reading (ear-reading) this book.

I loved the fierce fierce, difficult female protagonist. I was less fond of the "All You Need Is A Good Man To Fix You" idea that kinda ran through it. Especially since the Good Man is a bit of a philandering horndog. Ok, so he's also a put-upon journalist with a grudge, but still...

I saw the movie, so the plot wasn't a big surprise to me. It was kinda nice that the guy was the one who had to be rescued by the gal.

Simon Vance was the narrator of the version I listened to. He was excellent, as always.

Isabela H 

This book was an absolute pain to get into, it wasn't until past halfway that I got genuinely invested in the narrative and couldn't put the book down (meaning that it took me more than five months to read half the book and then two days to read the second half). I was pretty surprised that a book like this one would be so popular because there were moments where I simply could not care less about what was going on. As for aspects of the book that I liked, the character of Mikael Blomkvist would be pretty high up the list because he was a very relatable man who never frustrated me in a bad sense. The character of Lisbeth Salander was also really interesting, so I appreciated that aspect as well. 
Will I be reading the rest of the trilogy? I think yes, if only because I'm interested in watching the development of Lisbeth's relationship with Blomkvist, which was my favorite part of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Rishabh

What a cracking novel! 

The way Larsson interweaves his two stories had me in thrall from beginning to end. A multilayered, multi-charactered tale by a writer of some considerable power. Every word of praise that has been said to the book and the writer is richly deserved.

Brilliantly written and totally gripping.

Georgia Carr

I don't know where to start with this review. 

For one, if you can, don't take any notice of reviews that say there's a BAM moment when the book becomes amazing. I was waiting for said "BAM moment," and I'm pretty sure that ruined my reading experience. Even at 40% in, I was still waiting for the action. That's why this is 4 stars - because it is honestly the slowest opening to a book I have ever read. It's actually pretty painful. 

BUT (yes there's a "but") it's worth it. The rest of the novel is gripping, interesting and very well written. I don't understand what it is but Larsson has a very unique way of telling a story, and all that slowness pays off to create a really three dimensional world and cast of characters. Particularly Lisbeth, who I want to be when I grow up. 

If you have time to dedicate to this book, then read it. If you're looking for a quick, fast paced thriller, this is not for you (after 45% of the book is done with, maybe). It's a great and engaging read, but crikes it took a long time to get going. I nearly put it down, but I'm glad I didn't.

Kirsten Simkiss

** spoiler alert **
           This is a belated review because I read it last year and I don't think I had a Goodreads account then. 

I definitely enjoyed it, for the most part. Reading violent scenes about sexual assaults, obviously, are not my thing, but I was prepared for it having seen the recent movie. Lisbeth is definitely the best character in the book, in my opinion, and I look forward to seeing more of her. I will definitely be reading the next one.

Megan

Took me FOREVER to get into this one. It was a pretty solid read and I did not expect the story to take the twists it did but I really didn’t like the ending.

Dana Kraft

Excellent thriller, certainly some pretty dismal events. Makes me think about the definition of justice and how much it's aligned (or not) with truth.

Sanat Gersappa

Outstanding! Hard to believe that it was translated from Swedish. Totally unputdownable and worth the time. Waiting to read the other two books in the series.

Kay Jamieson

Honestly this book was just not my cup of tea, however very well written.

Kayleigh hughes

I was swayed in two directions before I started reading this book on the one hand I had my mum and sister telling me how poorly they thought of the book, an opinion I respect because of the 1000s of crime novels my mum has read, and on the other hand there were the shining recommendations by authors I respect. I tried to keep this out of mind but when I started it kept bugging me that I thought I should really enjoy this book because of the positive reviews it had received, but basically I didn't. Well not until 300+ pages. 

I found those first 300 pages hard to wade through. The writing was clunky, although that may a problem with the translation, there was tonnes that should have been cut out or edited down and I really had no emotional connection to any of the characters until Salander and Blomkvist started working together. Before that there were moments that caught my interest but overall it was a lot of work to force myself to keep going and finish the novel. 

I like the premise of the disgraced journalist hired to do an internal family investigation and I like Salander's character as an eccentric and deeply disturbed PI (I refuse to associate her as Autistic, I think that was an error on Blomkvist's part)and as the story continued I grew to really respect and invest in their characters but it took far too long, especially in the first book of a trilogy spouted as being 'The best crime novels of all time'. 

Finally I think the end of the novel petered on to long, after the resolution of the mystery and the action against Wennerstrom it should have finished quicker, instead we had to wander around with Salander again while she thought over her relationship with Blomkvist. I could have been quite happy if I'd stopped reading at page 520 or so. It was to much of a wrap up, oh we haven't heard from the original informant in awhile, let's have him send a christmas message, and let's have one final meeting with Vander where we'll discuss every percentage owned by the family and what outcome that'll achieve. 

Overall the mystery wasn't bad, in fact I quite enjoyed sifting through the red herrings which is one of the best parts of reading crime fiction, but a terrific middle doesn't excuse a terrible middle and end. I think this book had the potential to be much better but that someone should have taken Larsson's hands and taught him how to show, not tell and how to be a little ruthless and just chop away the unnecessary chunks. I think a much better book is hidden in the rubbish that has been left. I don't know if I'll read the rest in the series, I hate to start a series and not finish it, but I really don't think I can manage to get through another two of these books. Maybe I'll just watch the movies instead.

Marcella Chamorro

Too gruesome for me. Wish I hadn't read it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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