The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Read through Panama City Beach library. Set in Sweden, it's a murder mystery, family saga, love story and financial intrigue. Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist hired to get to the bottom of a young girl's disappearance, and Lisbeth Salander, the 24 yr old computer hacker who assists him with the investigation. It was reommended on Book Browse,

The financial intrigue part did not appeal to me, nor the computer antics used to uncover fraud and corruption. Mikael was innocuous enough to sort of glide through this story, whereas Lisbeth was a very interesting character, and I enjoyed the murder mystery part of the story. Interestingly enough, there were a number of murders, but the young girl Blomkvist was searching for ended up alive on a sheep ranch in Australia. 

To me, there are some things I had trouble with.  First, Lisbeth is brutally raped near the beginning of the book, but it appears to have had no affect on her, as she seduces Mikael quite casually shortly after they meet. Mikael has a girlfriend(?) who is married, and everyone knows about the other.  Is this Swedish casual sex, or a way to get lots of readers?

Stieg Larsson, the author, was murdered shortly after delivering the manuscripts for the second and third novels in this series. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE will be published next summer.  Well, maybe, but I doubt it....