#24: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Whoa! This book caught me be surprise. I had picked it up several months ago after seeing it around a few bookshops and thought, “Oh, that’s a pretty cover and I bet it’s a nice story.” Not once beforehand did I realize it was a Swedish mystery. But what a great one it was! From start to finish, the book had a perfect balance of edge and suspense. That said, it also had large amounts of dark, gruesome violence. Small Nordic villages aren’t usually the first place I think of when a mystery novel makes its way into my hands, but now I’m perhaps scared of ever visiting one. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was originally written in Swedish, making it difficult for me to pronounce names and towns in my head. I had to make up my own names for some of the characters, but I don’t think it detracted from the story. The main thing I always wonder at the end of these books is how someone was able to create such a tale. Larsson passed away in 2004 after delivering this manuscript so the question remains unanswerable, but he definitely left behind one of the better mysteries I’ve read in awhile.