The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I really, really, really enjoyed this book! So much in fact, that I am keeping this short so that I can try and read more of book two before work starts tomorrow.

This story is set in the form of a locked room mystery. A disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, is given the task to uncover what had happened to Harriet Vanger 36 years ago on the family island under the guise of writing an autobiography for her uncle. Meanwhile, 25 year old Lisbeth Salander, a researcher for a security company, is having her own ordeals.

I was a rather curious, when, at the halfway mark, the girl with the dragon tattoo had not even bumped into Blomkvist, but shortly thereafter that pieces fell into place - a lot more realistically than if they had been lumped into the thing from the beginning.

This is a good mystery story, targeted at adults (there is some content that I see people have complained about - but lets all be honest here, violence DOES happen to women, and it is naive to think otherwise). It does have more lengthy expositions than some of the shorter mysteries out there, particularly those aimed at younger readers. This, however, I felt added to the intrigue and created a good image of Sweden for those of us who have never been there (I actually can't remember reading a book set in Sweden before! How odd!). It created multiple options as to what could have happened. It also gave me a well deserved break from the loads of YA I have been reading for the kids at school and let my brain feel like an adult brain with a few degrees again.

Overall, I would rate this about 4.5 stars. I am glad I didn't read it during the hype, as I think I would have possibly enjoyed it less.

This is the second book cleared off my TBR pile for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading Challenge