Well, this is the second Stieg Larsson I’ve recommended.  I’ve already bought the third. And again become sad there will be no more. These are good, well-written thrillers. They’re paced in a way that a reader stays interested and yet can breath out from time to time. They are in an exotic place, and they contain characters that grow. There’s a lot of other novels that also have those things. But none of the others has Lisbeth Salander.
I decided to poke about a bit. Lisbeth has her own Wikipedia page (spoiler alert). She also has a fan page on the Internet. That’s probably because of the movies (the page features the actress that plays Lisbeth).
Now, to make it even better, Lisbeth is not the only important character in the book. She is the most compelling, but the other main character (Mikael Bomkvist)is also interesting. He has a Wikipedia page, and the actor who portrays him has a fan page, but there is no fan page for the character. The relationship between the two is fascinating. And so are most of the supporting characters. This is a deeply plotted book with excellent setting and line by line writing, but it’s over-the-top strength is all character.
As a writer, this is a clear statement about the importance of character.
Hey, I agree, I love the Millenium books – but I think I would have posted a Spoiler warning about the Wikipedia entry for Salander; I can’t say much more without spoiling, myself, but it gives away very matter-of-factly , and what the author apparently deliberately kept hidden until he chose to reveal it, something that was a major, MAJOR suprise to me. Maybe I’m just dense but it’s been a long time since a book surprised me like that…
I only read the first of the trilogy. The two main crrhacteas didn’t put me off as much as the over-written text. Way too much information on computer geek stuff, and as for the sheep in Australia, well that went way off track (& was inaccurate in terms of sheep farming in Oz according to an antipodean friend of mine). Larsson needed a good editor to reign in his off the wall enthusiasms, but overall I wasn’t impressed with the book and wouldn’t read the others in the series.