The Nature of Things

When I finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo earlier this year, I felt I needed a break before I went on to the next book in the series. It had been a hard book for me to read when I reached a certain point because of all the violence against women. What had started out as a financial thriller had suddenly changed course and turned very dark. I liked the book. It was well written and had an interesting, if somewhat farfetched, plot. But most of all, the two main characters caught and held my empathy. I wanted things to turn out well for them, especially for Lisbeth Salander, but that book ended on a down note for Salander and so I was anxious to see what would happen to her in the second book. Well, in the second installment of Stieg Larsson's series, The Girl Who Played With Fire , things go from bad to worse. Lisbeth is accused of three brutal murders and a nationwide hunt for her begins. The only one who seems to have any doubts of her guilt is Mikael Blomkvi...

I am reading the first in the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . I'm finding it virtually unputdownable. It's that good. The book was originally published in Larsson's native Sweden in 2005 and the buzz about it started soon thereafter. I've had it on my wish list for reading for quite some time now and finally I'm acting on that wish. Do you know about Stieg Larsson? He was a Swedish journalist and activist, a crusader against racism and right-wing fanatics. He lived under constant threat of violence and death from those that he opposed. He started writing the Millenium Trilogy mostly for his own amusement and had not attempted to have it published. He finally delivered the three completed novels to the publisher shortly before his death from a massive heart attack in November 2004. He was only 50 years old. He had mapped out plans for additional books in the series, a total of ten in all. Now, of course, we'll never ...