Girl gone a-cuckoo

Ah, Rosamund Pike. You underrated British actress you. I can't wait to see you wow everyone in the big screen adaptation of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. You'd kill them all (pun intended). Blonde, sexy, and so talented–you're a natural for the part. I'm so happy they didn't go for the cookie cutter Hollywood actress. Rosamund Pike, it's your time to shine. But first, let's talk about the book.

I read my first Gillian Flynn thriller years ago, a dark Southern gothic entitled Sharp Objects. Then I read my second–Dark Places, and I also wasn't disappointed. With Gone Girl, I am on a Gillian Flynn high. Yes, all the raves and hype are merited. Gone Girl is pure mess-up-your-head, who-is-the-more-reliable-narrator, wait-until-you-get-to-the-twisted-ending fun.

The gone girl in the novel is Amy, whom Rosamund Pike will be playing. She's married to 34-year-old Nick. Nick and Amy now live in a small town in Missouri, after having been both laid off from their jobs in New York City. Nick decides to return to his hometown to care for his mother, essentially removing his moneyed and beautiful wife from her NYC roots. Gone Girl is written in chapters where we read the alternating points of view of Nick and Amy.

In the novel's first part, I have basically made up my mind that it was Nick who did it. You see, Amy has gone missing on the couple's 5th anniversary. Nick has a few skeletons up his sleeve: the very young mistress, his unexplained whereabouts on the morning of his wife's disappearance, and the enormous credit card bills, to name a few. And it doesn't help that Amy, in the chapters written as diary entries, comes off as one sweet, self-sacrificing wife who seems to be getting more and more afraid for her life because of Nick's violet tendencies recently.

But in the second part of Gone Girl, Flynn throws us a curveball. Amy might not be right in the head after all. The disappearance could have been the result of months of meticulous planning on Amy's part. All right, I'll say it–Nick could have been framed. What happens after that can be likened to a slow burn, a deep and satisfying unravelling of the fucked up mind of Amy and the lengths that she can go to punish her husband. Yes, she knows about the affair and she's determined not to just grin and bear it.

Gone Girl is so wonderful in its portrayal of a sick mind that you forget how slow it can be in the first few chapters. One wonders if Gillian Flynn can top this. Her novels just seem to get better and better. But before the next Flynn thriller hits the bookstores, I'm ecstatic that there's the movie to look forward to. And, Rosamund Pike!

Read this book if:

1. You're a big fan of twisted endings in thrillers.
2. You love the slow burn.
3. You think it's a must to read the book first before the book comes out.

Feels like Hitchcock

I've always wondered why there hasn't been a global Japanese crime fiction phenomenon. We all see Scandinavian crime novels everywhere. I say the Japanese ones should be just as popular. There's a certain darkness, an edginess bordering on the crazy, that make me love them.

Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X is a different kind of mystery. For one, you know early on who committed the murder and how. Another, you read the novel to find out if the Japanese detectives will eventually find out who the killer is and weed out one red herring after another. It's very stimulating, this novel is.

The murder in question involves Yasuko, a single mother to Misato who works at a food stall. Enter Togashi, her ex-husband, a man whom she hasn't seen in 5 years. One day, Togashi walks into the lunch box shop where Yasuko works. For Misato, it's all deja vu, remembering the countless times Togashi has asked her money. Naturally, the meeting leaves a bad taste in Yasuko's mouth.

When Togashi goes to the apartment where Yasuko lives, he harasses her. Things get pretty ugly to a point when Misato, out of anger, clubs Togashi in the head. Togashi then retaliates and a skirmish ensues. Yasuko panics and ends up killing Togashi by strangling him. And this is where things get a bit complicated when they receive a call from Ishigami, their neighbor, with his offer to help dispose of the body. Ishigami is the novel's Suspect X, and his devotion refers to his affection for Yasuko. We learn that he doesn't frequent the lunch box shop where Yasuko works because of the food; he is just deeply infatuated with, nay, adores Yasuko.

The body is eventually found near a river and it's identified as Togashi. Of course, we should have a smart detective, and that comes in the person of Kusanagi, who becomes dedicated to finding out the killer. Everything points to Yasuko though, despite her weak alibi. Things get complicated when the detectives discover the connection between Yasuko and Ishigami, who we now learn is a math genius. While we do know that Ishigami was the one who crafted Yasuko and Misato's alibi, we are left to question how will the police look beyond the clues and finally get Yasuko.

But Higashino still has something up his sleeve in his novel. In The Devotion to Suspect X, we are introduced to Yukawa, a brilliant physics professor at the Imperial University, who serves as an unofficial consultant to the police regarding the cases that confound them. Yukawa, who is also affectionately known as Detective Galileo, somehow comes up with his own theory regarding who really did kill Togashi and how Ishigami, who appears to have been just an accomplice in getting rid of the body, could have actually committed murder. The ending is just too priceless to spoil.

What really made the The Devotion of Suspect X truly enjoyable is the apparent battle of minds between Ishigami and Yukawa. We learn that both went to the Imperial University and who were once good friends. Ishigami becomes a master of creating a deception, a veneer, which Yukama sees right through. As I said, how Yukama reveals the whole workings of the mystery is just too juicy to spill here.

I've heard that there a new Detective Galileo novel. And if it's half as good as The Devotion of Suspect X, I will happily gobble it up. Yukawa can be so charmingly geeky.

Read this book if:

1. You love elegant plot twists.
2. You have the patience to wait until the end for that satisfying reveal.
3. You have a thing for Japanese crime fiction.

Going loco over this local detective novel

I keep hearing the fact that there are no serial killers in the Philippines. "It's just not in our nature," my fellow Filipinos would say. But here's the thing: perhaps we just don't have enough data, and people haven't made the connections among the murders to conclude that there are indeed serial killers here in the country. Of course, I would like to believe there aren't any, but I'm open to the idea that I could be wrong.

In F. H. Batacan's novel Smaller and Smaller Circles, the premise is that a serial killer is preying on 12- to 13-year-old boys residing in a notorious dumpsite, and that the killings happen every 1st Saturday of the month. As if the thought isn't chilling enough, the bodies are found with their faces, genitals, and hearts missing. None of the boys though appear to have been sexually abused.

There are some elements in Batacan's work that makes it an unconventional detective novel. The detectives are 2 Jesuit priests, who really are very streetsmart despite having come from upper class families. The dynamic between these two men of the cloth is something we've seen before though. The older one was the former teacher of the younger. One is refined and reserved, and the other a bit brash and outspoken. But their partnership works. Batacan didn't litter her chapters with overboard scenes on how these two different personalities complement one another.

Another thing that makes this unconventional is the setting, which is a locale in a third world country with hardly any high-tech forensic equipment. The novel really becomes centered on the abilities of the two lovable Jesuits, who somehow discover the identity of the killer nowhere near the end of the novel. The last few chapters of Smaller and Smaller Circles deal with the eventual capture of the killer, which I think is a bit anticlimatic. I was hoping for a twist though, something along the lines of the movie 'The Silence of the Lambs', but it wasn't meant to be.

Batacan's award-winning novel was published 10 years ago, and I feel a small tinge of guilt for not having heard of it before. Thank goodness that one of the book clubs featured this short novel last weekend during the ReaderCon. I just had to get a copy after hearing good things about it.

Read this book if:

1. You like your detective novels unconventional.
2. You'll read anything that's won a Palanca.
3. You're a sucker for word-of-mouth publicity.

Good-bye, Lisbeth Salander

It's been more than 3 years since I last read and wrote my thoughts on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. So it's been more than 3 years since I was first floored by Stieg Larsson's talent and thought how unfortunate that we'll never read more of his works.

In the 3rd and last book of Larsson's Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Next, it seems that the author went all out to give Lisbeth Salander a grand farewell. However, I found myself wanting that it somehow lacked the thrilling action elements present in the 1st and 2nd book. We saw Salander fight it out in the first 2 books. In the 3rd, she's mostly in her hospital bed, with only a PDA to keep her connected to the Internet.

I was surprised with a number of things as I was reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. It turned out to be your 'thinking thriller', filled with lengthy expositions about the organization that played a large role in Salander's circumstances. There's also a good number of characters to keep track of, and the Swedish names does get some getting used to. I was surprised that the one person whom I thought would face Salander at the conclusion is murdered early on.

One thing was not very surprising though -- how you know that Salander would be acquitted with all the charges against her. Considering the sheer number of people who seem to be at her side knowingly and unknowingly, her vindication seems a foregone conclusion. Still, it was very satisfying to read her enemies brought to their heels in a fascinating courtroom drama. You can't help but smile.

Of the 3 novels, I especially love The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Perhaps it was the novelty of getting my hands on Scandinavian crime fiction for the first time that made me really like the novel. Or maybe it was the novel's closed murder room mystery that worked for me. I love murder mysteries and the 1st book was a brilliantly conceived one. Nevertheless, it was a treat to finally finish the trilogy, even though it took me a few years to get to it.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is one 'talky' novel. Lots of dialogue is found on the page. Larsson's characters have well-developed voices, making the dialogues easy to follow. And you have to hand it to Larsson for making sure to tie everything together in the end. By the close of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Salander is redeemed in every aspect, perhaps even in her personal relationships. Farewell, Lisbeth Salander. I'll miss you. I'll miss the girl who kicked ass.

Read this book if:

1. Scandinavian crime fiction is your thing.
2. You are a completist. You just have to read all the books that make up a trilogy or a series.
3. You can't get enough of Lisbeth Salander.

I wanna go to Russia

Suddenly, after reading A. D. Miller's Booker shortlisted debut novel, Snowdrops, I had the urge to book a flight to Russia. Miller has a very enviable gift of describing settings. You feel the extremely uncomfortable cold in Moscow, where temperature can fall below zero (enough for your mobile to be stuck in your ungloved hand when you use it outside). In Moscow, you can sense the acrid taste of corruption and smell the desperation of its citizens.

I thought I would be reading a thriller, something fast paced with a clever resolution at the end. Snowdrops is something deliciously more than that. It is indeed a crime novel, but it's also a travelogue of sorts, portraying the Moscow that you wouldn't see in guidebooks, the Moscow where single women dress up as prostitutes and where cabdrivers can prey on their passengers. It's a very unflattering picture of Moscow that's depicted in Miller's debut novel, but Moscow is all the more fascinating for it.

'Snowdrop. Your friend is a snowdrop.' That's what the Russians call them -- the bodies that float up into the light in the thaw. Drunks, most of them, and homeless people who just give up and lie down into the whiteness, and murder victims hidden in the drifts by their killers. [page 3]

You know from the start of Snowdrops that something will go wrong. Nicholas Pratt, the main character of the novel, writes a letter to his fiancée, forming the novel's narrative. Nick is an expat, a lawyer assigned to work in Moscow. One day, he meets two girls who introduce themselves as sisters -- Masha and Katya. It is revealed later in the novel that these two aren't really sisters nor cousins. They are players in a scam involving selling housing units in Moscow. Miller adds an extra layer to his story -- the romantic relationship that develops between Masha and Nick.

How Nick becomes part of this scam unfolds slowly in the novel, but it's not the kind that leads to ennui. In fact, Miller's writing appears to be beautifully controlled, focusing more on character introspection. Masha and Katya urge Nick to help their old aunt named Tatiana Vladimirovna move out of her Moscow apartment and into a new residential building. That's the scam right there. Nick finds out that Tatiana isn't a relation to the girls, that the residential building is never meant to be lived in, that Masha and Katya duped Nick in giving money to an oily character who appears to be a middleman of some sort.

In the end, both girls disappear. Tatiana, whom Nick has grown fond of, also goes missing. It is never mentioned what happened to the old lady, but it's a good assumption that she's been murdered. Miller toys with the reader's imagination. You just know that something grisly has happened to Tatiana. I love authors like these.

Read this book if:

1. You've always wanted to visit Moscow.
2. You like novels with that Hitchcock feel to them.
3. You love the cold.

An affair next Thursday

Have you ever read a book that all your friends are raving about so you finally decided to pick it up and ended up not liking it. In these cases, I usually ask myself, "What's wrong with me? Have I totally missed the point?" Well, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is one such book. I was prepared to really, really like it, but somehow, it didn't work for me. In Jasper Fforde's fantastical 1980s England where The Eyre Affair takes place, people can travel through time, original manuscripts get stolen, literature is taken too seriously, folks clone dodos for pets, fictional characters go missing, and people patrol the goings-on of vampires and other mythological creatures.

In The Eyre Affair, we meet Thursday Next, a detective who belongs to Special Operations 27 (SO-27), the Literary Detectives, who are in charge of investigating crimes related to, well, literature. One day, she gets a call from another more powerful special operations department (SO-5) and is tasked to help track one Acheron Hades, an elusive criminal who seems to have supernatural powers. Unfortunately, the operation goes wrong and she goes back to her hometown of Swindon again as an SO-27. Back as a literary detective, she gets assigned to track a missing character from one of Charles Dickens's lesser-known novels. Thursday eventually finds a connection between this particular crime and Hades, who also kidnaps Jane Eyre.

The world Fforde has conjured up for this novel is a bit too hard to swallow. There's something about adults messing with time and history that feels off for me, which I wouldn't feel if this were a young adult novel and the plot would be more quirky. I keep thinking about the ripple effect, wherein a particular change somewhere along the past would have severe consequences on the present and the future. Fforde's multi-thematic approach to The Eyre Affair (fantasy, sci-fi, literary fiction, crime) made me feel that the novel lacked a center.

Thursday has been described as part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry by many reviewers. Well, there's a subplot concerning her failed relationship and how she resolves it. There's the detective part, so I get the Nancy Drew comparison. The Dirty Harry analogy is a bit of a stretch though. Thursday is far too sentimental to pull off that tough detective character. Nevertheless, there's lots to love in Thursday -- her persistence, her wisecracks, her apparent talent to find herself in funny situations. She's something to watch out for.

Still, a lot of readers would have a blast reading about the various literary crimes the SO-27 detectives get involved in. If you're big on Shakespeare, you'd love their debates on the actual authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Fforde would also pique your interest on lesser-known literary works. And when you read that the ending of Jane Eyre has somehow been changed by the events, it makes you want to read (reread) the novel just to see if the "new ending" works.

The Eyre Affair is Fforde's Thursday Next novel. Most of my friends say that the series would get better eventually. Frankly, I'd just stick with my Elmore Leonard or, finally, read a Nancy Drew.

Read this book if:

1. You feel specially connected to a fictional character.
2. You're fond of strong heroines in novels.
3. You love alternate histories.

Walk away

When I find myself craving for a crime novel that has a noir feel to it, I immediately think of Patricia Highsmith. I love all her Ripley novels, especially the first one, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I enjoyed A Game for the Living, which I read just recently. And just two weeks ago, I bought one of her more popular noir novels, Those Who Walk Away, which is a very entertaining read.

In Those Who Walk Away, we meet Ray Garrett, a man who has just lost his new wife after she committed suicide in Mallorca. While vacationing in Venice, Ray comes in contact with Ed Coleman, his former father-in-law, who blames Ray for his daughter's suicide. Ed tries to kill Ray twice in separate attempts -- the first by shooting him and the second by letting him drown. Unknown to Ed that Ray actually survived, Ray decides to follow Ed secretly around Venice. Eventually, Ed discovers him and the two engage in a very suspenseful cat-and-mouse game in this Italian island city.

Highsmith downplays the cat-and-mouse concept though, choosing to focus instead on the relationship between these two men. The narrative doesn't become melodramatic at all though; it still is very suspenseful. Ray and Ed pop into each other's lives at the most unexpected moments, and you're always kept on edge as to what these characters would do to one another. Highsmith's characterizations of Ed and Ray become so well-developed that the rest of her characters become irrelevant. Ed's mistress, Inez, doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all but to echo what is in everyone's mind.

When I think about it, readers who have been used to the current crop of thrillers and mysteries would find Highsmith's narrative slow. Highsmith's chapters don't usually end in cliffhangers. But what sets Highsmith apart from other authors is her ability to conjure an atmosphere of menace and dread in her novels. In Those Who Walk Away, you're kept on edge because you know that something bad, something terrible but probable, is going to happen.

Read this book if:

1. You're into noir fiction.
2. You love the Ripley novels.
3. You've imagined yourself in a cat-and-mouse game.

What if someone killed your double?

Thrillers, mysteries, and whodunits are the perfect reads during cold and rainy days. And I was fortunate enough that I finished Tana French's excellent novel, The Likeness, during a rainy weekend. If you've a taste for non-formulaic mysteries, then go get yourself a copy of French's second novel. I promise you that it's very satisfying.

French once again focuses on Detective Cassie Maddox, a character in her brilliant debut, In the Woods. In The Likeness, Cassie has now been transferred to the Domestic Violence department of Ireland's police force. One day she gets summoned to a murder scene and discovers that the victim has an eerie resemblance to her and that she's going by the name of Lexie Madison, a graduate student in Trinity. Several years before, it was Cassie who invented Lexie Madison when she went undercover in an Irish university, and now she discovers that someone has assumed this made-up identity, someone who looks like Cassie in every single way. Her superior, not wanting to waste this unique opportunity to solve the murder, decides to have Cassie once again resume the identity of Lexie and assimilate herself in Lexie's world. They cover up the murder scene, informing people that Lexie survived the incident and just came out of a coma. So for more than a month, Cassie finds herself amid Lexie's closest friends -- the enigmatic Daniel, the handsome Rafe, the sensitive Abby, and the cheery Justin -- who all live in Daniel's ancestral house. All this just to seek answers to the case: Who really was this girl? Who killed her? Was it one of her friends?

One might wonder whether French has a background on the police force and psychology. She writes detailed sentences about each police procedural and provides clear insights on all her characters' personalities. No minor detail is spared in the book's lengthy 460 pages. The Likeness doesn't read like your typical thriller, where each chapter ends with a cliffhanger and most characters end up with cardboard-like personalities. Consider this beautifully written and instrospective paragraph about Cassie's thoughts on why people eventually confess:

Every detective, in all the world, knows that this is our best weapon: your heart's desire. Now that thumbscrews and red-hot pincers are off the menu, there's no way we can force anyone to confess to murder, lead us to the body, give up a loved one or rat out a crime lord, but still people do it all the time. They do it because there's something they want more than safety: a clear conscience, a chance to brag, an end to the tension, a fresh start, you name it and we'll find it. If we can just figure out what you want -- secretly, hidden so deep you may never have glimpsed it yourself -- and dangle it in front of you, you'll give us anything we ask for in exchange.

Clearly, French takes her time to develop her characters with believable personalities, and it pays off. The overall feeling one gets from reading her narrative is that The Likeness feels tight. Not a chapter, even though it doesn't seem to add to the "action" of the story, is out of place. Nevertheless, the usual devices of mysteries are here -- the red herrings, the twists, the closed murder room atmosphere, but French doesn't give them to the reader in one catch-all chapter. She takes you by the hand and lets you complete the puzzle for yourself. Like in her first novel, there's no complete picture here. Depending on your insight, you have untangled a mystery or you're left with more questions. Either way, you end up with a masterful exploration of how seemingly ordinary individuals can be driven to commit something unspeakable as murder.

Somehow, The Likeness reminded me of another novel: Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Both focus on a close circle of friends in an academic scenario and center on the death of one of them. While The Secret History can be a bit pedantic for some, French's novel is very accessible and engaging. Having just written two well-received novels, French is clearly on her way to becoming a master in this genre.

Read this book if:

1. You're partial to murders involving a knife.
2. You've always thought that you have a double somewhere.
3. You think your friends would be the death of you.

The tattooed girl returns

Don't you just love it when you go to a bookstore and discover that the second installment of a much-loved is on its shelves? You figuratively lose your shit when that happens. The second novel of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, The Girl Who Played with Fire, once again brings back all the characters I've grown to love and hate since I read the first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I think the Millennium series is shaping up to become a truly landmark work of Swedish detective-slash-thriller fiction. (Scandinavian novelists have been making waves in this genre recently.)

Lisbeth Salander, the polarizing heroine in the first book, is back, but this time she takes center stage in the novel. At the novel's beginning, she cuts off all ties with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist when she discovers him romantically involved with his editor-in-chief. Blomkvist's magazine, Millennium, is at the cusp of revealing an expose on sex trafficking in Sweden, an issue that the government doesn't pay much attention to. When the two people involved in the research (a couple actually) get shot in their apartment, all eyes lead to Salander as the murderer. On the same day, Salander's legal guardian, Nils Erik Bjurman, is also found dead in his apartment, also shot at close range. Naturally, Salander becomes the prime suspect to that too.

Having known Salander intimately, Blomkvist insists to the police that Salander doesn't have anything to do with the murders. But all evidence points to Salander and no one else. The gun has Salander's prints. Salander also visited the couple just before the murder. The police also found sex tapes showing Bjurman brutally raping Salander, which the investigators think is enough to serve as Salander's motive. Blomkvist eventually finds out that Salander knew about Millennium's investigation on prostitution and tries his best to find a link between the murders and Salander. He eventually discovers a connection, particularly between a shadowy figure in Sweden's criminal underworld named Zala and Salander.

As you progress through the novel, you realize how the criminal web gets larger as more people in high places are involved. Despite the growing number of characters, Larsson never fails to focus the reader's attention to Salander. It is this focus that makes the novel more plot driven than the first. The novel starts a bit slowly though, with the first few chapters being used to bring the reader up to speed on Salander's many quirks and talents (hacker, spy, amateur mathematician, detached, and weirdly bisexual). It's all worth it though, as the stage is set for all the cat-and-mouse chase sequences that follow.

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, there's none of the closed murder mystery theme that was pivotal in the first novel. The second installment is more edgy and would definitely appeal more to avid readers of Robert Ludlum's Bourne novels than fans of Agatha Christie's elegant murder mysteries. You may be expecting an ending appropriate to the complex web that Larsson wove throughout the novel's 650 pages. Instead, Larsson dismantles this web, revealing how everything is tied to Salander. He even manages to effectively add a few twists regarding the mysterious character of Zala, who only appeared in the last chapters of the book.

I am eagerly anticipating the third novel, which will also be the last novel by Larsson. It seems unfortunate that a writer, who is capable of writing superb plot lines and developing characters you could relate to, die after submitting his manuscripts to his publisher.

Read this book if:

1. You like unpredictable protagonists.
2. You have no qualms reading violent scenes.
3. You always root for the underdog.

Another pleasurable thing that's Swedish

I had an Agatha Christie phase when I was 13 years old. There's nothing like curling up in bed with a good old-fashioned mystery novel. My favorite Christie novels are And Then There Were None, The Pale Horse, Murder on the Orient Express, and By the Pricking of My Thumbs. Christie relied on a simple formula: execute the murder, call in the detective, round up the suspects, find the motive, and reveal the murderer. The formula may seem antiseptic, but Christie executed it flawlessly. In the mystery, there's no one like Christie. I tried to read Erle Stanley Garner and Dorothy Sayers. They're good, but they lacked the elegance of writing the closed room murder mystery.

The closed room was a popular device in murder mysteries back in the 1950s to 60s. Basically, in the novel's denouement, all the main characters are gathered in one room (usually the scene of the crime) where the detective, with much drama, points out the killer and his motive. It's this reference to the closed murder room mystery that made me want to read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The girl with the dragon tattoo is Lisbeth Salander, a genius when it comes to computer hacking and private investigation. Oddly, she's not the main character of the book. Larsson planned that the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was to be part of a series of mystery crime novels with Salander as the main character. Larsson, however, was to meet his death in 2004 with only three books completed.

At the start of the novel, Carl Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist, is convicted to serve three years in prison because of libel. The subject of his expose, the influential businessman Hans-Erik Wennerström, is hell-bent on crushing the charismatic Blomkvist and making sure that Blomkvist becomes a pariah of the Swedish press. While in jail, Henrik Vanger, a semi-retired businessman, contracts the services of a security firm to investigate Blomkvist. This is where Salander gets involved, reporting that to Vanger that Blomkvist may in fact have been set up in publishing history on Wennerström. After Blomkvist serves his time, he gets hired by Vanger to write a book on the family history and to find out who killed his beloved niece, Harriet. In return, Vanger promises Blomkvist an offer he couldn't refuse: Vanger has information that would let Blomkvist have his revenge on Wennerström.

Edgy crime novel, old-fashioned murder mystery, and investigation of social aspects in Sweden in equal parts, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo succeeds in so many levels. When Blomkvist meets and interviews each member of the eccentric Vanger family, the reader is pulled into the story by having himself question whether that particular Vanger is the killer. The closed room in the novel is not really a room at all but an island, where the Vanger estate is located. When Harriet disappeared, all access to the the island was temporarily cut off because of an accident, allowing Blomkvist to write a list of all possible suspects. Larsson has the talent to make the reader step into the shoes of Blomkvist, an unconventional hero.

The many references to financial terms and goings-on in the book should not stop you from enjoying the book's yarn. They're non-threatening. In fact, these details add to the pleasure of reading. You get to see the importance of why Blomkvist had to write that damaging piece about Wennerström. Larsson also explores Swedish norms on sexual violence and racism. Salander gets violently raped and the reader is shocked that nothing could be done about it. Ties to fascism are also perfectly acceptable in the world of business.

Larsson's second book is yet to come out. This time, it'll feature Salander on a more substantial role. Hopefully, it'll be as good as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Most thrillers and crime novels do not really stack up to Larsson's novel. This really is an intelligent book. It doesn't dumb down the reader with predictable angles and sloppy characterizations.