Pun Salad

Hidden in this 590-page novel is a pretty decent 300-page mystery.

I watched the movie before reading the book. Unsurprisingly, the plots are similar: the titular Girl is Lisbeth, a disturbed but brilliant computer geek. She teams up (eventually) with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist to find out the truth behind the disappearance of 16-year-old Harriet Vanger, a scion of the wealthy Vanger family. Only problem is: the disappearance (and assumed murder) of Harriet took place decades ago.

Watching the movie first helped to highlight the problems with the book: there's a lot of bloat. Wrapped around the gripping mystery is a non-gripping subplot about Blomkvist's magazine Millennium, his co-workers, his conviction for libel, and his eventual vindication. The movie wisely pruned this stuff to the minimum necessary for plot coherence.

There's also non-plot bloat as well: we're treated to many, many low-color descriptions of meals, shopping trips, etc., all contributing zip to the plot, atmosphere, or character development. Zzzz.

The late author, Stieg Larsson, was an actual big-C Communist, Trotskyite-flavored. Knowing this, I kind of expected the book to be more tediously strident. Fortunately, this is minimized. Yes, there's a subplot about historical Swedish Nazis (I hate Swedish Nazis), but there's no ideological lesson. Instead, there's an overriding theme about violence against women, and the men who perpetrate it. Larsson is firmly opposed to violence against women, a brave stand.

I think I'll pass on the remaining books. Most seem to agree that there's a significant dropoff in quality in the sequels.