LARSSON ON FIRE: THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

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The second book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy The Girl Who Played With Fire begins, after a brief prologue, with Lisbeth Salander chilling out in Grenada on the proceeds of the Wennerstorm affair; a fortune gained by her computer hacking skills. Lisbeth there sleeps with a local youth ten years her junior, and during a hurricane saves the life of a battered wife, while working to solve Fermat's theorem before returning to Sweden. Just a quiet holiday for our feisty heroine.

Back in Stockholm her evil legal guardian Advocat Nils Erik Bjurman is plotting to escape from the spider's web Lisbeth had enmeshed him in during the first book in the trilogy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Meanwhile Mikael Blomkvist and Erica Berger are planning to publish a themed issue of Millennium magazine devoted to sex trafficking and prostitution. The investigative work for this had been done by Dag Svensson, a freelance journalist, and his girl friend Mia Johansson, a criminologist and gender studies scholar. But before the magazine and the accompanying book can be published Johansson and Svensson are murdered and there is forensic evidence that the murderer is Lisbeth Salander. When Bjurman is also found murdered with the same gun the nationwide hunt for Lisbeth begins in earnest.

I was one of those who was very disappointed at the overhyped The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and discussed this at some length here and here.

My opinion regarding The Girl Who Played With Fire, which I finished reading yesterday, is that it was a worthy winner of the Best Swedish Crime Fiction novel of 2006 and is almost a certainty for my best five reads of 2009.

If reading 'Tattoo' was like struggling through deep snow reading the last 400 pages of 'Played With Fire' is like skating on ice. The start of the book is pedestrian, although not as turgid as 'Tattoo', but then the triple murder occurs and the book completes a metamorphosis into a police procedural crime thriller full of action and excitement as three separate groups hunt for Lisbeth Salander.

While 'biker gang' villains, Blomqvist and his journalists, and the police all hunt for Salander, she searches for the reasons that will explain her long term situation that developed after what she calls "All That Evil".

Larsson cannot resist his habit of giving us a plethora of extreme detail about everything such the size of the hard drives of a laptop and the the ages of all the police team. But in this book they add to the atmosphere and the internal clashes in the police team lead by Inspector Jan 'Bubbles' Bublanski are integral to the story. Bublanski aged 52 and Jewish, along with 39 year old Sonja Modig are the good cops while Hans Faste aged 47 is an egocentric loudmouthed homophobic bigot, who I suspect we might see more of in the third book of the trilogy. There Stieg Larsson's penchant for precise detail and repetition is infectious.

I thought this was a excellent book because in the middle of all the action and excitement Stieg Larsson has managed to indict incompetent and venal government agencies as well as the sensationalist media. These are both capable of destroying peoples lives and what I really enjoyed was that as the whole story came together the reader is made to understood the valid reasons for Lisbeth Salander's antagonistic difficult nature.

The diminutive Lisbeth Salander dominates this book even more than she did in 'Tattoo' with her determination not to take crap from anyone, but we also see her basic humanity as she shows concern for her intermittent lover Miriam Wu and her old infirm guardian Palmgren. She has been described as a 'male fantasy figure' and I agree with this, but not in a sexual way.

I certainly fantasize about having Lisbeth Salander, with her mace canister, her taser gun, her computer skills and above all her determination on my side in any argument.

I am already suffering from withdrawal symptoms roll on Larsson number three and even more Lisbeth Salander.

You can read another review here and one with some spoilers here.

WHO IS LISBETH SALANDER?

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How will we view the character of Lisbeth Salander when the present hysteria, and I use the word carefully, has died down?

hysteria: exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement

Some time ago I posted that I thought a writer to be considered one of the fifty greatest crime writers should fulfil a number of criteria. The writer should have either:

1) a large body of impressive work

2) or written one stupendous book, such as Harper Lee.

3) or created a uniquely memorable character

The interest in Lisbeth Salander which has pushed The Girl Who Played With Fire to the top of the hardback best seller lists certainly brings Stieg Larsson into consideration as a great crime writer. But we should not lose our 'critical perspicacity' as some reviewers have done with flowing phrases like this:

Johansson and Svensson are found murdered and the description of the fleeing assailant matches Lisbeth Salander to a T.

The problem is that there was no description of a fleeing assailant in the book and it was the forensic evidence that linked Lisbeth to those murders.

Other reviewers have compared Salander to The Count of Monte Cristo, a character in Star Wars, and an adult Lara Croft. The books have been labelled a modern fairy tale with allusions to James Bond, and Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking as well as her boy detective 'Kalle' Blomqvist.

We have been told that Stieg Larsson because of these references did not mean us to take Lisbeth Salander seriously.

Surely the subject matter of the books and the Swedish title of the first book, Man Som Hatar Kvinor [Men Who Hate Women] means Larsson took Salander very seriously indeed. Unfortunately the Millennium series is no clever fairy tale or allegory, and Lisbeth represents every child that has been abused and every woman that has been brutalized and humiliated. There is a particular scene in TGTPWF when Salander goes to buy an apartment and because of her appearance is treated like a naughty child and sent away without proper consideration.

We as a society feel guilty at our failings and are intrigued by the idea of a typical 'child like' seemingly helpless victim having the skills and determination to fight back against her oppressors. She is the investigator for our time just as much as Miss Marple was for her age.

I can't wait for the next book in Stieg Larsson's series, Luftslottet som spangles, winner of the Nordic Glass Key in 2008.

LISBETH SALANDER ON SCREEN TWICE

Last night I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, on DVD, and this afternoon I went to our local Picture House Cinema to watch The Girl who Played with Fire.

I missed seeing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when it was at the cinema, because of my broken leg [patella] and subsequent immobility.

It will take something similar to stop me going to the The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest when that is released in cinemas early next year.

TGWTDT was the first movie I had watched on my 21 inch I-Mac, and it was like having my own private cinema. Very pleasant.

This was superb film, with beautiful cinematography and performance from Noomi Rapace that swept away any doubts I might of had that she would not match the Lisbeth of my imagination. Michael Nyqvist still does not seem to have the personality to be the "Kalle" Blomqvist of the books.

But the TGWTDT is all about Lisbeth Salander, and the story of the sick men of Vanger family, whose abuse of women goes back decades.

The Girl who Played with Fire was even better, and the 129 minutes flew by in a very quiet, but fairly well attended cinema.

Noomi Rapace's performance was gripping, and she is so good in the part I cannot imagine why Hollywood wants to remake the film with another actress in her part. Once again it was scenically beautiful, and the violent action scenes were brilliantly directed with the result that this is a very tense and exciting movie.

Some judicious editing of the book, including those first irrelevant one hundred pages for instance, created a much tauter screenplay, which made a remarkable good effort at dealing with a complex story.

I can see in the future cinemas showing all three movies over the course of a marathon "Lisbeth Salander" day, because if you haven't read the books you are left in a state of limbo at the dramatic finale of the The Girl who Played with Fire.

The recent article proclaiming that Stieg Larsson was a bad bad writer, raises the question what do you want in crime fiction books?

If it is clever elitist but ultimately bland wordsmithery, and characters who you ultimately don't care about, there are other authors for you.

If you want good storytelling, despite much superfluous material, and a very relevant message then it is worth putting up with the odd IKEA shopping list, and the "flat cliche ridden" prose.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code a better book than Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I think not. Irrespective of whether the plot of The Da Vinci Code has a modicum of truth, or whether there were Nazis in Sweden in the 1930s and 1940s.

When you see her on the screen, acted so brilliantly by Noomi Rapace, it comes across what a vulnerable and damaged character Stieg Larsson created in Lisbeth Salander.

Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Review of The Girl who Played with Fire

Casting Lisbeth Salander

Who is Lisbeth Salander?

LISBETH SALANDER THE FINALE?

Last night I finished reading The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest and already acute withdrawal symptoms have begun. What is on Stieg Larsson's laptop? Could there really be a fourth novel, and outlines for six more books on the hard drive?

We have been privileged to witness, with his Millennium trilogy, the growth and development of Stieg Larsson as a writer from the clunky and turgid journalistic approach of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, through the much more exciting The Girl Who Played With Fire, and on to this final triumph with Hornets' Nest. It makes his early death even more tragic when we consider how many more more books he might have written if he had lived a full span. In making my journey from sceptic to fanatic I was lucky enough to spend a day with the translator 'Reg Keeland' [Steven Murray] in May, and learn that we were in for a real treat with this final book in the series.

By the way 'Reg' did a fantastic job completing the huge task of translating this monumental work into English.

In the first hundred pages or so of Hornets' Nest Larsson reminds us of the events at Gosseberga, and how Salander and her father, the Soviet defector Zalachenko, ended up under guard a few doors from each other in Sahlgrenska Hospital.

The story then moves on dealing with four multilayered plots, each fascinating and worthy of our attention on their own, but skillfully interwoven into the complete story.

I thought Dragon Tattoo could have been edited down by a couple of hundred pages but Hornets' Nest in my opinion would have suffered if anything from the sub plots was lost.

Firstly there is the revival of the plan to silence Salander instigated by the Section for Special Analysis, a secret unit within SAPO, the Swedish security police.

Secondly, Mikael Blomkvist,and the staff at Millennium magazine, who along with Armansky's Milton Security organization and Lisbeth from her hospital bed, work to expose the breaches of Salander's constitutional rights going back over years by the secret Zalachenko clique.

Thirdly we follow Erika Berger in her new position as editor-in -chief at Svenska Morgen-Posten, S.M.P., where she discovers that when running a newspaper not all the problems are financial.

Finally there are the 'good guys' in the Security Police led by Torsten Edkinth, Director of the Constitutional Protection Unit, who are also investigating the Section for Special Analysis, and who luckily for Blomkvist have among their number the attractive Monica Figuerola.

The narrative moves back and forth between these gripping plot lines and there is considerably less information dumping than in previous books, despite the inclusion of some chunks of Swedish politics, and the history of the Swedish security services. Interestingly for a book in which one of the main themes is the mistreatment of women by men there are some wonderfully strong female characters.

Lisbeth Salander, whose character develops becoming a bit more human and even showing some empathy towards those trying to help her, while still retaining that ability to surprise and shock.

Erika Berger, lawyer Annika Giannini [Blomkvist's sister], security police woman Monica Figuerola and Milton Security's Susanne Linder would probably rate number one billing as a female lead in any book that did not feature Salander. I do find Blomkvist a little bland compared with these feisty women but that may well have been Larsson's intention.

The four strands of the story come together in a satisfying climax, and [minor spoiler alert] in a brilliant court room drama that had me shouting yes, yes, yes!

Stieg Larsson was a writer who had a deep hatred of injustice and a crystal clear view of what was right and wrong. The Millennium trilogy is mainly concerned with the the mistreatment of women and the breaches of Salander's constitutional rights, but because of Stieg Larsson's anti-fascist stance at Expo magazine I think the books are also intended to send a message that when any state regards some citizens as less important than others, we are on that slippery slope to totalitarianism.

For some of my other Stieg Larsson posts click and scroll down.

My review of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

My review of The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Who is Lisbeth Salander?

Translators in the Rain.

Expo magazine tribute to Stieg Larsson.

More on Hornets' Nest.

Mack's comments on Hornet's Nest at Mack Captures Crime.

Maxine's review at Euro Crime.

Dorte's review at DJS Krimiblog.

Bernadette's review at Reactions to Reading.

Glenn Harper's review at International Noir.

[My thanks to publishers Quercus, who supplied the book for review. Regular visitors, there must be a few, will know that I always give my honest appraisal of a book even when it gets me into hot water.]

CASTING LISBETH SALANDER

Last night I watched a few minutes of actor David Suchet explaining how he had read most of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels in order to play the part in the TV series. He was particularly keen to look like the Poirot of the books, walk like him, exhibit all the mannerisms and use a voice 'that came from the head' and therefore talk as he imagined Poirot would talk. He obviously felt he owed this devotion to the author, the books, the character and the audience.

Whoever cast David Suchet in the part knew that he would physically bear a strong resemblance to the image of Hercule Poirot in the books.

I have not quite finished reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire but I have enjoyed reading it considerably more than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. 

In the books especially in 'Played With Fire' the author goes into great detail in describing Lisbeth Salander. She is described in various parts of the book as being either 124 centimetres or 150 centimetres tall, weighing 40 kilograms and being 26 years old but easily mistaken for a 14 year old schoolgirl.

In non-metric terms Lisbeth Salander is under 5 foot tall, weighs about 6 stone, and looks 14. 

The movies of Larsson's Millennium trilogy have been cast with Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace-Noren as Lisbeth. I don't know the work of actress Noomi Rapace-Noren but she is going to have to pull off a phenomenal performance to convince readers of the books that she is Lisbeth Salander. 

I think I will stick to the image that Stieg Larsson gave us in the books. 

I will post my review of The Girl Who Played With Fire during the week but there is already a definitive and balanced review by Maxine of Petrona on Euro Crime here. 

LISBETH SALANDER AND EBERHARD MOCK

Studying those Mock covers brought home to me what wonderfully vivid characters have come onto the crime fiction scene in the last few years. I have always thought that characters are far more important than plots in providing a great reading experience. But it is important that those characters are a good fit in their period and their location. Philip Kerr's seemingly out of place 'Marlowe like' creation Bernie Gunther works well in the Nazi Germany setting simply because the Nazis were a group of gangsters, who instead of running a scam in LA were incredibly running a country.

Larry Beinhart in his book How to Write a Mystery talks about creating characters to suit a theme, or the subject matter, as an alternative to using a real person and modeling your character on them. Of course an example of the later is Arthur Conan Doyle using his medical school professor Joseph Bell for his Sherlock Holmes and adding a few quirks such as his addiction to morphine.

We are very lucky that two very original characters who fit their period and their theme so perfectly, Lisbeth Salander and Eberhard Mock, have been created, quirks and all, for us to enjoy. [scroll down after clicking on those links for all my previous posts about these characters]

They are not in the least like Raymond Chandler's image of his detective described in the essay, The Simple Art of Murder; "He must be the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world".

Or "He must be, to use a weathered phrase be, a man of honor-......".

These new heroes or anti heroes could not be more different.

Lisbeth Salander, a child like vulnerable, bisexual, tattooed, pierced, motor bike riding computer hacker who will use extreme violence if she feels justified. She is certainly justified with some of the people she meets in the books. I hope we get more Salander and less Blomqvist in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

Eberhard Mock, an alcoholic depressive brutal wife-beating policeman who is interested in the classics, astrology, chess and prostitutes, and who administers harsh justice without recourse to the legal system. I am looking forward to more in this series with its back stories and slightly rambling eccentric plots.

The two characters are a perfect fit to operate within their respective societies, societies damaged by abuse, the destruction of the family, lack of respect for authority, war and a subsequent breakdown in moral codes.

Salander's world may not be exactly the same as Mock's harsh post war Weimar and then Nazi Germany, but to her an abused person treated with contempt by society it must seem pretty close. Although Mock is in harmony with his decadent world, and Salander is the typical outsider they both have the skills to survive in a harsh environment.

Authors Stieg Larsson and Marek Krajewski, along with translators Reg Keeland and Danusia Stok have done a superb job in bringing us these characters.

I think both characters are fantastic and along with Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, Salvo Montalbano and Harry Hole show we are definitely in a golden age for translated crime fiction.

Who are your favourite characters, and are they a good fit for their worlds?

LISBETH SALANDER: IMAGE ON THE SCREEN

Friday was Stieg Larsson day in Sweden and Denmark as the movie based on the first book in the Millennium trilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was released. [Information from The Local Sweden's News in English full article here].

You can read my previous posts which discuss the Stieg Larsson and Lisbeth Salander phenomenon here.

The article comments that "some critics have said virtually unknown actress Noomi Rapace .......is physically too big and muscular to faithfully play Salander, described in the trilogy as a small androgynous girl who is so skinny she looks anorexic.......But most viewers of the nearly two and half hour film said physical differences were forgotten thanks to Rapace's convincing performance."

Some authors never describe their protagonists to avoid the problem of readers not identifying with the character in any television or movie adaptation. Others have a very clear idea of what the hero or heroine looks like and describe them in detail. Stieg Larsson was one of the later type and described Salander as anorexic, 124-150 cm tall, 40 kgm in weight and although she was 26 looking like a 14 year old. It is a tragedy that we can't ask the author what he thinks about the casting of the movie, but I shall look forward to the sub-titled version with great anticipation to see how an actress who bears very little resemblance to the Lisbeth Salander I imagined comes across on the screen.

The film is a success.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

In Stieg Larssson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland,  Mikael Blomkvist has been convicted of libelling billionaire financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, and his magazine Millenium is struggling to stay afloat.

Lisbeth Salander is a difficult young woman with rare gifts who earns a living working for Dragan Armansky's investigative agency. She is pierced, tattooed, sometimes violent, socially inadequate and protected as a ward of court by Sweden's guardianship laws. 

When Henrik Vanger, elderly CEO of the Vanger Corporation, revives the hunt for his niece Harriet who disappeared 40 years ago from secluded Hedeby Island he asks Mikael to leave Milennium in the hands of his partner and  part time lover Erika Berger and investigate the eccentric Vanger family. 

Mikael will eventually team up with Lisbeth to uncover some very nasty secrets and an appalling family history.

You can read two excellent reviews of this book by very knowledgeable bloggers here and here.

I am still confused by my reaction to this book which has received both critical praise and been the beneficiary of an impressive marketing campaign. It seems that virtually everyone in Sweden  has read the book and here the price has been heavily discounted by both Amazon and Sainsbury, with the result that it is the number one paperback best seller in Sainsbury's Exeter Pinhoe branch.

But interestingly The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo failed to win the CWA Duncan Lawrie International Dagger when the clear favourite being beaten by the Lorraine Connection written by Dominique Manotti which I reviewed here. 

I must admit I find it difficult to be critical of an author who worked so hard against racism, violence against women and right wing extremism and who died so tragically young but to be honest I was slightly disappointed by the book. Of course after all the ballyhoo and build up perhaps this was inevitable.

Large parts of the first half of the book are very turgid and reading it is like struggling through a deep snowdrift. We are presented with large amount of information about the various members of the Vanger family who are card board cut out stereotypes with for example the Nazi lunatic, the spoilt rich bitch, the kind elderly uncle, the loyal family lawyer and so on. 

Stieg Larsson takes fifty pages to give us information that more experienced authors would cover in one or two paragraphs. He revels in petty detail and description of financial dealings. We are told over and over by the each of extended Vanger clan that poor old Henrik is obsessed with finding Harriet's murderer. 

The mystery is not that mysterious as we can work out the solution quite early in the proceedings as Mikael delves into the photographic evidence from the day of the disappearance which was also  the day of an accident on the bridge isolating the island from the town of Hedestad. You did not need to be a super detective to know what is going on when the Swedish title is translated as Men Who Hate Women.

I am used to reading Swedish crime fiction with the slow detailed build ups and the systematic police procedural investigations but this novel took it to an extreme.

There was an excellent 400 page novel in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and it is a pity that no one dissected it out from the all the padding and extraneous detail. Stieg Larsson appeared to want to attack too many targets in one book, financial journalists, fascists, violent men, the wealthy and that lead to what was in my opinion the excessive length of the book.

Then why despite all my reservations did I finish reading this book with a feeling that I had enjoyed it and that I wanted to read the next book in the series The Girl Who Played With Fire. 

Well the book did improve as it went along and Stieg Larsson for all my criticisms created in Lisbeth Salander one of the most interesting characters in modern crime fiction.

Lisbeth Salander the tattooed pierced truculent computer expert, who rides a motor bike, lives among chaos and is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

She is the reason I left feeling I had enjoyed this book and that I will return to this series to see how she copes with life's vicissitudes.

'......introverted, socially inhibited, lacking in empathy, ego-fixated, psychopathic and asocial behaviour.............."

'You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that these events were somehow were related. There had to be a skeleton in one of their cupboards, and Salander loved hunting skeletons.'..............

'She went into the living room and found an anorexically thin girl sitting on the sofa, wearing a worn jacket and with her feet propped up on the coffee table. At first she thought she was about fifteen, but that was before she looked into her eyes.' 

The Girl Who Played With Fire is due to be published in English in January 2009. 

LISBETH SALANDER IDENTIFIED ?

In January I posed a question:

Who is Lisbeth Salander?

The answer may have been provided by the translator of the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy, Reg Keeland aka Steven T Murray below. [seen here signing books at Crime Fest Bristol 2009]

Models and precursors of Lisbeth Salander at Stieg Larsson's English translator blog.

NOOMI RAPACE IS LISBETH SALANDER

The cover story of today's Daily Telegraph review is entitled 'On the trail of the world's most seductive sleuth'.

The story is David Gritten's interview with Noomi Rapace, who plays Lisbeth Salander in the film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and is a mixture of the usual background material [Pippi Longstocking, Eva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson etc] along with some interesting insights into how the actress prepared for the role, and her admiration for Stieg Larsson's agenda.

"I think Stieg Larsson was pretty brave," she said. "He wanted to bring up things that we don't like to talk about, or like to ignore. In Sweden everybody has this perfect surface. Everybody's very polite and controls their feelings.

For instance there's certainly violence against women here, but it gets swept under the carpet. We have immigrants, but you don't see them in the centre of Stockholm- a lot of people here don't feel part of this society. And we still have old Nazis, Swedes who agreed with Hitler. We've never addressed this."

Read the complete interview.

I think it is a little harsh that in this lengthy article, and in the Telegraph listings of the week's best sellers that the translator Reg Keeland does not get a mention.

Is Lisbeth Salander, played by Noomi Rapace, the world's most seductive sleuth?

Any other suggestions? Barbara Havers as played by Sharon Small, or Jane Tennison as played by Helen Mirren spring immediately to mind.

The film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo opens in the UK on March 12.

LISBETH SALANDER IS BACK!

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday on returning from our allotment [the produce in the photo reminded me of the Michael Connelly title, The Narrows] in that those lovely people at Quercus Books had sent me a review copy of Millennium III, The Grand Finale, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland [aka Steven Murray].

Lisbeth Salander is back!

From the press release:

Stieg Larsson [1954-2004]

Editor -in-Chief of the anti-racist magazine Expo. He was one of the world's leading experts on ant-democratic, right-wing extremist and Nazi organisations, and was often consulted on that account.

Click and scroll for my previous posts on the Larsson phenomenon and for my most visited post Who is Lisbeth Salander?

I will have to exhibit some restraint and not start Hornets' Nest yet as I want to read the rest of the Ellis Peters shortlist before the award ceremony on the 29 October.

SWEDISH RELATIVES:ASTRID LINDGREN AND KARIN ALVTEGEN

Dorte has kindly explained the relationships between Astrid Lindgren's creations, Kalle Blomqvist and Pippi Longstocking, and Stieg Larsson's creations Mikael Blomqvist and the memorable Lisbeth Salander here.

I was interested to read here that Karin Alvtegen, just nominated for an Edgar for best novel for Missing, is the grandniece of Astrid Lindgren. 

I think Lisbeth, the adult Pippi Longstocking, could have fitted in very well in the only Karin Alvtegen book I have read, Betrayal.

Thanks to Dorte for the Butterfly Award. 

You can find an excellent summary of the numerous posts concerning Lisbeth Salander collected together by Maxine of Petrona here.

SOMETIMES

A few days ago The Rap Sheet posted Ali Karim's short but very interesting interview with Christopher Maclehose. Maclehose heads up Quercus Publishing's Maclehose Press Imprint who have the rights to Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.

From the interview 21 December 2008:

AK: So what in your opinion makes the books 'unique' ?

CM: Lisbeth Salander, no question. 

"Stieg Larsson for all my criticism created in Lisbeth Salander one of the most interesting characters in modern crime fiction." Crime Scraps 5 August 2008

Not a difficult call I admit but....

AK: What other crime fiction delights might you recommend from the Maclehose Press Catalogue?

CM: Crime fiction umm. I would indicate Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski.

Well I reviewed that excellent book here and one of my year's highlights was an informative interview with Marek here and here. 

Sometimes it really is nice to be ahead of the game.

LISBETH SALANDER STILL DOMINANT

I am now 172 pages into The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest and even stuck seriously wounded in a hospital bed Lisbeth Salander dominates the book.

Sandberg had looked so nervous for a second that Zalachenko had to smile, although the pain drilled into his jaw.

"I see that you milksops are too sensitive to kill her, and that you don't even have the resources to have it done. Who would do it.....you ? But she has to disappear.

Her testimony has to be declared invalid.

She has to be committed to a mental institution for life."

LARSSON UNDER FIRE

When does a review step over the line between constructive criticism, and become a vitriolic attack?

On Friday last week the Daily Telegraph published a review of the movie The Girl Who Played With Fire.

A condensed version of this review was published in the Saturday edition of the Telegraph.

Friday's version had the simple headline announcing a review, and a sub title 'The Swedish TV adaptation botches the job of compressing the Stieg Larsson book'.

By the Saturday edition the headline had metamorphosed into:

'Larsson sequel that's pure tat'.

For those not familiar with informal English language, 'tat' is defined as tasteless and shoddy usually referring to clothes and jewelry.

The criticisms made of the film were that the book's Caribbean prologue had been omitted, 'Noomi Rapace's bisexual avenging hacker' has less to do than in the first film, and 'the film flunks on all levels of sustained tension, plausible back story or moral depth, but it's luridly violent denouement with shades of bad Thomas Harris leaves the grimmest taste in the mouth'.

Firstly this was a long book, something had to go, and most people who read the book wondered where that prologue fitted in to the whole saga.

The book had two separate plot lines one with Blomqvist's investigations, and the other with Lisbeth Salander on the run from a triple murder charge. Obviously Noomi Rapace could not be in every scene, although her performance warranted that.

In 2001 I watched the film Hannibal [based on the Thomas Harris novel] on cable television, because of the beautiful locations at Asheville, North Carolina and Florence, Italy, both of which we had visited earlier in the year.

In that film there is one character who had been deliberately disfigured and left paralysed by Hanibal Lecter , and who was eaten alive by wild boars. Later in the film Hannibal [Anthony Hopkins] eats brain from a still living Ray Liotta's head after cutting off the top of his skull.

The violence in The Girl Who Played with Fire is certainly nowhere near at that level.

The bad guys in the Larsson trilogy, and this film, are neo-Nazi biker gangs, Eastern European people traffickers, serial abusers of women and rogue Swedish intelligence agents.

Fifty hours community service, six months probation, a discussion of women's rights, or a good telling off, is just not going to work with these people.

Lisbeth Salander's violence towards the bad guys is almost certainly justified in her circumstances, and provides a strong moral depth to this movie.

Are some people evil? Do they need to be stopped?

Or do we go on proclaiming abuse of women, and people trafficking is terrible but.........

The feedback I have had from as far afield as the English Midlands, Denmark and New Mexico is that this was an enthralling film, and an extremely good effort at adapting a complex story for the screen.

I can't wait for The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest.

THE STIEG LARSSON DEBATE

In view of the complimentary remarks about my post by Ali Karim on the Yahoo Forum 4 Mystery Addicts I thought I would share an edited version of the discussion with you here. Ali Karim has been one the the main enthusiastic advocates for the Stieg Larsson books with his articles on The Rap Sheet.

Ali Karim in reply to my post:

Great post, and you raise some very interesting points, and despite differing opinions the construction of argument is excellent, and I do agree with your points. And your kind words are appreciated, as is your perception. I will have to warn you, after reading Vol II, I saw all the shortcomings in Vol I, and trust me, Vol II is truly remarkable, when I read it, I was in a trance-like state, unable to eat, sleep, function until I had finished this dark tale.

My original post:

A good part of the fun in reading crime fiction, blogging about it, and reading the comments on this group [and elsewhere] is that we can hold such widely differing opinions. I enjoy everything Ali Karim writes and his enthusiasm is infectious. I certainly agree with his opinions about Arnaldur Indridason and new star Johan Theorin [his Echoes From The Dead is a must read which won the Swedish best first crime novel for 2007] but I just feel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo did not warrant the big build up it received.

Someone on this forum suggested that Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code was more hyped than Dragon Tattoo. I would reply that no one suggested Brown should receive the Nobel Prize or that he rates up there with Christie, Chandler, Hammett and Fleming.

The bar has been set so high that Vol II is bound to be a disappointment. 

I sincerely hope it is not but having been told that it takes Swedish crime fiction beyond Sjowall and Wahloo and Henning Mankell to a new level I wonder what to expect.

I have the greatest respect for Stieg Larsson's anti-fascist campaigning but his first book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was in my opinion  a rambling, poorly constructed novel with one redeeming feature the character of Lisbeth Salander. 

I don't have any academic qualifications for making this statement, but if the New Yorker magazine can have someone discuss the book who has never been to Scandinavia or read any Scandinavian crime fiction then I can put in my twopenn'orth. 

*******

I will be pushing all my other reading to one side when I get my copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire and expect to get my socks blown off.

Links can be followed to my previous posts  and discussions on this subject  here.

Photo of Nori Rapace-Noren and Michael Nyqvist the actors playing Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist in the movie.

HEIGHTENED ANTICIPATION: THE STIEG LARSSON PHENOMENON

I have decided to postpone the Quirky Quiz for a few days as I want to post about the Stieg Larsson phenomenon and the varying opinions about the books. 

I have posted at some length here, here, here, and here about this previously but wanted to update readers to the feedback I have received and the discussions about the casting of the movie.

For a media advertising campaign that has successfully blitzed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo to number one on Amazon UK's literature in translation list, admittedly at the greatly discounted price of £3.86, the choice of book covers and the actors to play Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist seem strange. 

On Stieg Larsson's web site the comments about the movie casting are similar to my own views. Noomi Noren is certainly not the Lisbeth of the book and as one person states she looks more like Erika than Lisbeth. Noomi is not a  23 year old who could be mistaken for 14, too tall, too old, too attractive! 

Michael Nikvist has an easier task because the character of Blomkvist is so bland but some have said he also is too old. The trailer on this website hardly adds to one's knowledge about the movie.

'Out of respect for Stieg Larsson the casting people might have read the books more carefully.' Francoise 12 November

But my basic worry is that this book will be read by people who have not read any other Scandinavian crime fiction and will dismiss it as turgid, slow and like wading through deep snow drift. They will then not read the other Nordic authors who deserve attention.

The brilliantly funny Irish author Declan Burke found the first book pedestrian stuff and suggested the publishers 'yank out the first 160 pages, or pulp the first book and just gives us the best stuff.'

Declan stopped reading after 112 pages, after all life is indeed too short to read a 500 page introduction.  

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is indeed a 'marmite' of a book you either love it or hate it as witnessed by this review and comment from the Charleston City Paper.

'This is easily one of the worst books I have ever read.'

Reg Keeland is the distinguished translator of the Larsson trilogy, as well as books by Henning Mankell, Karin Alvetegen, Helene Tursten and Camilla Lackberg.

He commented that 

'be assured book one only lays the groundwork for great stuff to come in books two and three.'

And added 

'Larsson took the genre beyond Sjowall and Wahloo, beyond Mankell, into a whole new area of thriller literature.'

I  await The Girl Who Played With Fire with  heightened anticipation and I do hope I will not be disappointed.

'The hype is something else' 

STIEG LARSSON: THE PHENOMENON

Stieg Larsson was a Swedish writer and journalist who was born in Vasterbotten in northern Sweden in 1954. 

He was brought up by his grandparents in the countryside near Norsjo, a small community about 100km north of Umea.

Prior a sudden heart attack which caused his death at the very young age of 50 he was active in the fight against racism. He helped start the 'Stop the Racism' anti-violence project in the 1980s, and formed the Expo-foundation in 1995. The Expo-foundation, and the magazine Expo of which Larsson became chief editor, were dedicated to studying and mapping  anti-democratic and right wing extremist and racist tendencies in society. 

Stieg Larsson was also interested in science fiction and was chairman of the Scandinavian science fiction society. He regarded the Millennium trilogy as his 'pension insurance' but surely could never have predicted the tremendous success it has achieved.

He has won the Basta Svenska Kriminalroman in 2006 for Flickan som lekte med elden [The Girl who Played with Fire due for publication in English in January 2009]. Previous winners have included Henning Mankell, Hakan Nesser, and Kjell Eriksson.

He has also won the Glasnyckeln, the Nordic Glass Key Award, in 2006 for Man Som Hatar Kvinor given the softer English title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It seems that he may have won the Glass Key for 2008 as well with the third novel in the trilogy Luftslottet Som Sprandes [Castles in the Sky the provisional title and due for publication in English in January 2010].

Previous winners of the Glass Key have included Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Jo Nesbo, Hakan Nesser and Arnaldur Indridason so Stieg Larsson's books are in excellent company. 

Much of this information was obtained from the Stieg Larsson website here but a friendly warning if you visit the website.  

The books are to be made into a movie series and there are photographs of the actors who are to play the lead parts of Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander on the website. The actress scheduled to play Lisbeth is too old, too tall, too well built, too beautiful and not nearly as vulnerable as the character was described in the book. I have had to expunge this photograph from my memory cells as I continue to read the book.

I am over half way through The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo and a review will follow some time next week.

RED WOLF: LIZA MARKLUND

Red Wolf by Liza Marklund was published in Sweden as Den Roda Vargen in 2003, but we have had to wait till 2010 for this translation by Neil Smith, deputy editor of Swedish Book Review.

Crime journalist Annika Bengtzon, recovering from the traumas that she faced in The Bomber, is working on the story of a terrorist attack at the F21 base at Kallax, outside Lulea, which occurred in November 1969. A Draken fighter-plane exploded, and a young conscript died after being horrifically burned.

She travels north to find that Benny Ekland, the journalist she was due to meet, had been killed in a hit and run accident. She meets a young witness , Linus Gustafsson, who tells her that the accident was in fact cold blooded murder and decides to dig deeper. She learns about Ragnwald, [ragn-divine power, vald-ruler], a member of a left wing group, who disappeared decades earlier, and became a professional killer for ETA.

Her witness, Linus, is murdered, and then there are other victims whose families receive handwritten Maoist tracts in the post.

Has Ragnwald returned and why?

Annika painstakingly pieces together this story of misguided young left wing revolutionaries, while her obnoxious boss Anders Schyman schemes to block his business rivals, and her pathetic husband Thomas is unfaithful.

Red Wolf is an excitingly detailed, not to be missed, thriller in which Liza Marklund deals with among other things, many of the problems faced today by women.

Annika Bengtzon is a heroine trying to cope with a demanding job, even more demanding children, whom she adores, a philandering husband, and close friends with similar problems.

It is part of Annika's charm that she is not perfect, and she can be devious and even hysterical at times. This makes her seem like a real person, and not some kind of fantasy figure.

Liza Marklund's language when describing Sweden's social problems is terse and concise:

This really was another country, or at least another town. Not Lulea, and not really Sweden. Annika let the car drift through the shanty town, astonished by its atmosphere.

The Estonian countryside, she thought. Polish suburbs.

Annika seemingly has very little time for those spoilt children from the social democratic rich countries, who chose to follow a violent path, however temporarily.

The ruler with divine power-not a bad alias. Did it actually mean anything, other than delusions of grandeur?

But then what was terrorism, if not that?

More than anything I enjoyed as someone who was a student during the turbulent 1960s the political wisdom and insight contained in the pages of Red Wolf, a lot of which is applicable today to a slightly different situation.

'But surely they were communists as well?'

'Oh yes ,' Berit said, wiping her chin with the napkin. 'But nothing upset the rebels more than those who almost thought like them.'

I do hope we get the remaining Annika Bengtzon books translated soon, and hope that the translation of Red Wolf was not a side effect of the Stieg Larsson phenomena, or the association with JP, but on its own merits.

*****************************************************************

In September Maxine at Petrona cleverly analyzed the elements that defined Stieg Larsson's three novels, and that could be used to liken other novelists to him.

Liza Marklund had already written five novels between 1999 and 2003 [The Bomber, Studio69, Paradise, Prime Time and Red Wolf] before the first Stieg Larsson was published, and it is interesting that many of those elements could apply to her books as well.

1] They have exciting plots with the heroine frequently in danger.

2] There is a central female character. Although Annika Bengtzon is not as "unusual" as Lisbeth Salander she is a character women can identify with, and men want to be with.

3] Annika Bengtzon is a campaigning journalist, as is Blomqvist.

4] In Larsson's world the baddies are very bad and the goodies good. In Liza's books Annika is a real person and far from perfect, while some of the baddies have perhaps made the wrong choices in life.

5] Each of the three Larsson books is different, TGWTDT [Tattoo] is a variation on the locked room mystery, TGWPWF [Fire] is a fugitive drama, and TGWKTHN [Hornets Nest] is a political spy thriller.

Marklund's books are also variations on a theme with people in an isolated manor house in Prime Time [I have not read this one], and international criminal gangs and social service swindles in Paradise.

6] There are lots of detail in both Stieg Larsson's, and Liza Marklund's books.

We get details of how Annika gets her information in Sweden's very open society, and of the machinations involved in running a newspaper.

7] There is a curiosity factor concerning the author.

Larsson because of his campaigning journalism and early death, Marklund because she is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and an attractive woman.

8] The books of both authors are set at an easy reading level, although I found Marklund's books a lot easier to read.

9] The Larsson books are now successful films, and there will be Hollywood versions! Some of Marklund's books have been filmed, and there are more in the pipeline.

10] Both authors books have won awards in other countries before their publication in English.

There are also differences between the books, and the characters in them, for instance Annika Bengtzon is married and heterosexual, while Lisabeth Salander is single and bisexual. But another element that links these books is that the male characters are bland, and usually weak, in comparison with the strong female leads.

Maxine has given us a template for deciding in future whether the blurbs "The Next Stieg Larsson" or "Reminiscent of Stieg Larsson' are a valid comparison.