A locked-room mystery like no other: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Over a period of a year and a half I have read books from several different genres ranging from thrillers, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, Christian literature, etc. and whenever someone asked me what my favourite genre was, I was never able to give a definitive answer. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo changed that for me. I can now most certainly say that a mystery thriller is what I enjoy the most. The idea of a puzzle or the unknown and the way a story builds up to the big reveal is something that I really like.
Written by Steig Larsson, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which is a crime novel was published posthumously in 2005. The story follows journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer genius Lisbeth Salander as they try and solve the disappearance of a girl who went missing nearly 40 years back. What makes the disappearance unique is that it follows the locked-room model which essentially means that the murder was committed even though the room was locked from the inside. In this case the murder/disappearance happened on an island from which there was no means of escaping. So that not only makes it difficult to dispose of the body but it also provided the police a small pool of 20-40 suspects that they could easily look at. Yet even after all that, the mystery wasn’t solved. Only once Mikael is hired to investigate the matter is when things slowly start unraveling and the story takes a more sinister turn.
Being over 500 pages long, the book does as anticipated, take things slow initially but it once it started to pick up the pace then it really took off. I do most of my reading while traveling in the metro and I can usually finish about 40-50 pages of a book in a day. But when I’m reading a book like this I can easily double that number. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the other stuff I read but in such books you’re just so eagerly looking forward to what happens next that you can’t help but read faster. Steig Larrson is a master novelist. He’s very successfully able to create vivid images in your mind by describing every single thing in detail whether it is the landscape or the situation or the people. What that does is that it makes the story very real in the reader’s mind. In-fact I even checked out the faces of the persons in the movie version and attached them to the faces of the people in the book just to make it more real.
What starts off as a very simple plot soon takes a very dark and disturbing turn by the end of it. Parts of it may in-fact be hard for some readers to read. If you find it hard to read about violent crimes especially those against women, then this book is definitely one that you should avoid. If you’re fine with that then I assure you that there’s a great story waiting for you. I also see a recent trend of mystery/thriller novels becoming increasingly violent these days. Everything seems to have taken a darker tone. Books like Gone Girl, Girl on the Train and The Girl with the Dragon tattoo are all books that follow this theme. Also, while typing this I realized that each of these books have the word “girl” in them. Quite a coincidence I must say. Maybe it’s just an indication of times that we live in. Anyway it was a thrilling read for me and I loved reading it and I would certainly recommend it to those who like this genre.
My Rating: 4/5