The dragon tattoo? Has almost no point in the book; mere decoration — literally. But I guess it sounded better than "The Girl with the Wasp Tattoo". I'm pretty sure when Hollywood remakes the current Swedish movie, they'll play up the dragon tattoo as they fuck-up the movie. That would be par for the course.

Some books you read for in-depth character explorations, others for beautiful descriptions of landscapes or the human psyche. This book is about the plot and little more. The characters are one-dimensional, Sweden is rendered in moderately interesting snapshots, several critiques are delivered of financial reporting, and people live through personal crises for which I had almost no sympathy. In many ways, this book (and, it appears, the subsequent companion volumes to the trilogy) are Harry Potter books for grown-ups. Instead of Harry and Hermione, we have Mikel and Lisbeth, and several nasty people playing the role of He Who Cannot Be Libeled. In other words, something far from world-class literature but a hell of a lot of fun to read.

I wanted to read Girl both to join in the fun but also so I could see the Swedish version of the movie in current release, sans spoilage; apparently, since it was not made in Hollywood, it's not a piece of shit. How refreshing that would be (oh god what if they let Peter Jackson do a Bones to the remake?). Worth the read? Damn right it is. How terribly sad the author, Stieg Larsson, didn't survive to enjoy the success. He's done what I'm guessing he set out to do: entertain the hell out of readers. I doubt he had pretentions to literary greatness with this; it reads as if written by a very good writer wanting to tell a new type of mystery that defies easy guessing at the solution. (And a bit of possible foreshadowing at what might be in book 2; that's always fun, too.)

And for that, he gets a big thanks. I just hope he makes it clear in the later books why the damn dragon matters at all.