I read this on my phone, and I'm not entirely sure I got a legitimate copy, so some of the things I bitch about might not be actually in the book. Like the author's insistance on giving way too much detail on things which did not advance the plot. In my version Blomquist (I have no idea how to spell that) loads up a program to create a database for all the Vonhamm family members, and Larsson spends a lot of time telling us all about the two guys who invented this program. For all I know that was added later by whoever created my digital copy, like a free advertisement or something.
If it was included in the actual book, then what the hell, Larsson? Did you sell ad space in this thing???
Isn't Larsson dead, though? Perhaps all those way wordy passages were kept because Larsson himself wasn't around to edit these books. I will never know, because I'm not going to research it.
So, this book starts as a painful exposition of Blomquist's legal troubles, but eventually gets to the point: Blomquist is hired by an elderly gentleman to write his biography/history of his family, and also to solve the mystery of Harriet, the man's neice who went missing at 16. SPOILER: She's alive. She ran away because her brother and father were serial killers. Blomquist solves the mystery of the disappearance, solves the mystery of the killings (which no one even knew about before he started digging) and eventually solves his legal troubles. He does all this solely because he is fortunate enough to become aquainted with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Lisbeth Salander). She's a punkish, tiny woman with incredible hacking abilities and a photographic memory. I totally understand why these books are popular and why everyone loves her so much. I kind of want to be Lisbeth Salander, too.
This took me awhile, because I kept getting bored during all the boring parts (and there are many) but overall I liked it. I'm definitely going to read the other books, eventually.
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