The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Steig Larsson apparently really wanted to make some points with this trilogy about women and violence. This book opens with a quote about how eighteen percent of Sweedish women have been threatened by a man. "Wow", this American thought. "Sweden is SO safe!" Perhaps not what he was going for.

The story concerns disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist's investigation of the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a teenager who went missing 40 years ago. The Vanger family has money and power as well as many dark secrets. Along the way Blomkvist meets Lisbeth Salander, a goth girl with arguably autistic tendencies who is an ace investigator and computer hacker.

Although I found the beginning slow, and the translation annoying (for example Salander is described as "anorexic" rather than "very thin" or "anorexic looking" when two paragraphs later the reader is told she doesn't have an eating disorder.) I was eventually totally drawn in. Blomkvist leads a bit of an overly charmed life as far as women throwing themselves at him goes but Salander is a great character and the story itself is truly engaging. I'm reading the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, so stay tuned!

Degree of Guilt

I don't read a whole lot of the legal thriller genre, but I have read several books by Richard North Patterson. His last few books have become more overtly political, tackling such issues as abortion, the death penalty, and Israel. While I appreciate the complexity of how these issues are presented in those books, they can come across as an ethics course with some plot hanging on to it. I prefer his earlier novels like this one. Mary Carelli is a journalist who is lured into the hotel room of famed writer Mark Ransom by the promise of tapes of a famous politician and starlet. When she shows up on the doorstep of ex-lover Christopher Paget, who is raising their son, she has been accused of murdering Ransom in what she claims was self-defense after he raped her. The mystery of what happened in that hotel room and the ghosts from Mary and Chris's past are all revealed with a great deal of suspense, plot twists, and character study.