8 months ago, I posted a review of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. That was the first of a trilogy, and tonight I just finished reading the final part. It was interesting to go back and read my thoughts on the first book and see how they compare to the trilogy as a whole.
Firstly, the final book as an individual novel was thoroughly gripping, and it kept me hooked from start to finish. There were sufficient levels of twistiness, with the requisite sex and violence thrown in for good measure. Try as he might to avoid it, Larsson just can’t help himself from letting his words quickly turn sexy and dirty very quickly.
The characters from the previous two novels stayed true to form, and in a couple of cases were fleshed out much better. The two main protagonists, Blomkvist and Salander (the eponymous anti-heroine) didn’t really develop too much, but they had such rich textures from the preceding pages that this was unnecessary. You knew what to expect from them, and they delivered.
One of the new characters is a fitness-freak policewoman, and it is on her that Larsson seems to get a little carried away with his descriptions. He positively drools over her muscled frame and athletic build, and it struck me as I was reading that this was the second crime/thriller trilogy I’d read in which the author introduces a physically strong female character in the final book.
Thomas Harris did the same trick in Hannibal, with the character Margot. Admittedly, the policewoman here isn’t a full-on bodybuilder like Margot, but repeated reference is made to her muscle tone and the fact that she is stronger than most men. Is it the case that these authors can’t write a more normal female character, or is it that they have a bit of a fetish for this type of woman?
Speaking of fetishisation, it’s pretty clear that Blomkvist is the ideal which Larsson wants to be. Larsson (before his untimely death) was an investigative journalist, just like Blomkvist, and it has to be said that Blomkvist really doesn’t have any negative qualities to his character. He’s dedicated to his work, steadfastly loyal, and an absolute ladies man. It really is a superhero-esque role of sorts.
I can’t really say that there were any characters I actively disliked in terms of their portrayals. Yes, of course there were “baddies”, but they were pretty well-rounded too. In most of them, you could see their dilemmas in deciding to go through with certain actions, and there weren’t too many single-minded cold-blooded individuals.
What can I say about the plot without giving too much away? Well, it very much is an immediate follow-on from The Girl Who Played With Fire, much more so than that was from the first book, and it deals heavily with events in that part of the trilogy. Even 500 pages in, it’s still making huge references to the second book, which is always satisfying when you’ve invested so much time in the characters and plot.
I felt that the resolution of so many plot lines was done very well, and there weren’t really any loose threads by the time I finished reading. And Larsson does an equally good job of keeping you on your toes with a few twists here and there.
Even in the sections where you already know how it’s going to turn out, the writing is of sufficiently high quality to keep you locked in and enjoying it. It’s mostly dialogue which does this task, although his descriptions of the fast-moving action scenes are equally good.
It’s not going to be too long before Hollywood snaps this up, although I understand that a film of the first book has been made in Swedish already. I really hope that the films remain in Sweden, as the country itself is a huge part of the novels, particularly this last one. I can see how certain US institutions and bodies would fulfil similar roles, but it just wouldn’t work overall, I feel.
This trilogy has been criticised as being a bit light, or a bit cheesy, but I have to disagree. These books are nothing like that Dan Brown crap. Yes, they are crime thrillers, but the writing is so much better than Brown’s, and the themes dealt with are much more interesting.
It sounds horrible to say, given that the author died before the trilogy’s publication, but I’m glad that there won’t be a fourth novel in the “trilogy”, as happened with Night Watch. The final novel there was the weakest by a mile, and really left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, whereas here Larsson has gone out on a high.
