Lizbet Salander, meet Inspector Maigret

Book review, Title The Millenium Trilogy, Author Stieg Larsson, Rating 4.0, Lizbet Salander, meet Inspector Maigret

The Millenium Trilogy Stieg Larsson Book review

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Lizbet, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, carries the Millenium Trilogy. She is a private investigator, a severely withdrawn, highly intelligent young woman who has been terribly abused, both by her father and as a ward of the state. Lizbet trusts no one, and has developed world class computer hacking skills which serve her in good stead in her job as a private investigator and beyond. She teams up with an older investigative journalist, the fruit of said union providing a broad view of two generations of Swedish culture.

These three Swedish modern murder mysteries have been immensely popular internationally. They are peopled with odd and interesting characters, and the plots are complex with reasonable momentum.

The three linked mysteries are overly and graphically violent, which is the only serious objection I have to the trilogy; the tough subject matter could have had more impact with less graphical emphasis. (A lesser objection is to the occasional stretches of comically clumsy product placement, wherein the author itemizes in detail the various Ikea furniture pieces populating several apartments, but these sections were easily skimmed over.)

While these are well-executed tales of corruption and revenge, the stories are otherwise not exceptional. The strength of these novels is the detective Lizbet; she is in this way, perhaps, the successor to Simenon’s detective novels, whose stories and plots were almost background to the daily life of his main character Inspector Maigret, who was truly an existential detective.

Recommended, but not for the faint of heart.