That would be a big mistake. These books are the real thing; intelligent, exciting, grown-up thrillers. And that’s a pretty rare thing. The thriller writer’s art is undervalued by many. It is incredibly difficult to produce a believable fast moving plot whilst also being expected to provide lurches, twists and turns and all the while keeping pace and plausibility under control. Larssen proved to be a natural.
His three books are based around a Swedish investigative magazine called Millenium and deal in part with their exposes involving high level business and government misdeeds. Larssen also uses this platform to deal with a subtext about the abuse of women and the difficulties of seeking redress in a male-dominated society. The author knows his subject matter and writes with authority about investigative journalism, unsurprising since he was a magazine editor and world expert on right wing organisations.
Along the way the stories manage to take in serial killers, missing persons, Russian spies, international fraud, a family mystery and secret spy-rings. What more could you really ask for?
The books also feature a unique heroine. Lisbeth Salander is a character quite unlike any you have ever met before and she will prove hard for you to forget. In fact these books don’t contain any cardboard characters; even minor players in the stories are fleshed out to the extent that their actions seem perfectly true to their characters.
Too often adjectives like “gripping”, “page-turning” and the marvellous “unputdownable” are daubed on the covers of quite ordinary fare. In the case of this trilogy they are all accurate and you will be thrilled.
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