Lisbeth Salander is a girlish twenty something who has an
uncanny ability to hack into your computer and delve into your innermost secrets, and would
have no compunction stealing your hoard of ill-gotten gains. Cold as ice, she never allows any wrong
against herself unavenged, even if it meant slamming an axe against her
father’s cranium (this episode is in the second book of the trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire). She keeps quiet after a
brutal rape by her new guardian, but she makes sure she gets even by inflicting on
him a most severe physical and psychological pain. She scorns the status quo, and wears exotic tattooes
and body piercings as if to show her point. On the side, Salander beds guys and
gals, but what the heck; remember that this novel is set in Sweden where prostitution is not
illegal and permissiveness on sexual matters has been the norm for as long as
we can remember. If you are of the older generation admiring
girl detective Nancy Drew (whose author raised Cain when her creation appeared
in a TV play sometime ago wearing skimpy attire or doing some other unprudish
behaviour, hehe), The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo may be too much for you.
She warms up to Blomkvist, the investigative journalist who describes
his relationship with his female editor as that of an occasional lover, and who
beds down every available consenting female who enters his radar. Most
people consider Lisbeth an idiot; some suspect she has Asperger’s syndrome or
autism. Very few people know she has
photographic memory and tries to solve Fermat’s equation and other obscure
mathematical puzzles when not hacking into other people’s lives. Her guardian recommends her to a security
agency headed by Armansky, a fifty plus old man who develops a vague fondness for the girl, although he keeps
his distance. In this beginning of the Salander trilogy, she helps Blomkvist track down
the murderer of a rich heiress who supposedly died some forty three years
before. Their search leads them to the lair of a cold-blooded serial killer.