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?

LARSSON ON FIRE: THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Update: This blog is now dormant but I have moved to Crime Scraps Review where you can read all the old posts and lots of new material.

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

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.

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 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.]

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.

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. 

TATTOO BALLYHOO

I have nothing but great admiration for the anti-fascist and anti-violence stances taken by the crusading journalist Stieg Larsson but the increasing ballyhoo with regard to his first novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is becoming quite ridiculous. 

I have reviewed the novel here and  posted about the Stieg Larsson phenomenon here.

Yesterday the The Times Books section lead story was entitled 'Monster hit , the extraordinary story behind the literary sensation, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' and the entire cover devoted to a photo of a girl with a tattoo that appeared to be borrowed from the cover of a John Burdett  Bangkok novel. You can read the full article here.

The on line article does not include some of the print version side bar comments such as:

'The ballyhoo is fully justified.' Marcel Berlins, The Times

'Swedish crime fiction like the country, has both class and social conscience. It was only a matter of time before it produced its own War and Peace.' 

Sydney Morning Herald

'It doesn't get better than this.' Gefle Dagblad, Sweden

It almost makes it a pleasant change to come back to earth and read a dissenting voice such as this over the top quite vicious review from the Charleston City paper. The ballyhoo is such that although the Times article makes play with the fact that 'Tattoo' was nominated for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger it fails to mention that it did not win, and lost out to Dominique Manotti's taut political thriller Lorraine Connection reviewed here.

We can remember Stieg Larsson as a great campaigner for righteous causes but let us not get carried away The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is not a great book. It is certainly  not in the class of the novels of Sjowall and Wahloo, Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indridason, Karin Fossum, and Jo Nesbo. 

I believe Larsson was learning his craft with Tattoo and I fully expect The Girl Who Played With Fire, his second book which did win the Basta Svenska Kriminalroman in 2006, to be  a much better structured and plotted effort.

The danger is that with all the hype and overblown praise heaped on Tattoo new readers to Scandinavian crime fiction will be put off by the turgid beginning and other faults in Larsson's book from reading more accomplished authors. There is an interesting post from Petrona here with links to reviews of some excellent Nordic crime fiction.

As far as I am concerned The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, even with Lisbeth Salander, is a far inferior book to any of the three Jo Nesbo books I have read and reviewed here, here and here or the gripping Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theoren reviewed here. 

More insanity here with a suggestion that Stieg Larsson should get the Nobel Prize for Literature!

INTERNATIONAL DAGGER?

Karen of Euro Crime produced an excellent suggested shortlist for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award here.

Karin Alvtegen: Shadow

Niccolo Ammaniti: The Crossroads

Hans Fallada: Alone In Berlin

Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Fred Vargas: The Chalk Circle Man

Johan Theorin: Echoes From The Dead

You can read another review of the Stieg Larsson here.

Interestingly the Karin Alvtegen and the Stieg Larsson were both translated by Reg Keeland. 

I have read and reviewed four out of the six books and would find it virtually impossible to choose a winner from those, but I suspect the battle will be between a couple of Swedish books that have already won prizes in Scandinavia; Echoes From The Dead and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

But I feel Alone In Berlin [Every Man Dies Alone in the USA] by Hans Fallada is a beautifully constructed quite exceptional book that should be compulsory reading both in our schools and universities. It would not do any harm for those greedy politicians who are bringing our parliamentary democracy into disrepute to read it as well.

It is a difficult choice. 

Who do you think will win? You can find a full list of  eligible books here. 

[photograph taken at Budleigh Salterton on Monday, proving it isn't always raining in Devon]

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' 

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.

16 RANDOM THINGS OR URIAH ROBINSON REVEALED

I am not very keen on memes they usually arrive when you have a lot to blog about and never when you have the blogger's block. 

But I was tagged by Jeff Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet and asked to provide 16 interesting facts about myself. The three other bloggers tagged at the same time as me were all shining luminaries of the crime fiction world [see here] and that convinced me that I should participate. 

Asking any egomaniac to blog about themselves is rather like giving a pyromaniac a box of matches. 

Well here goes with my 16 things, a fair sample of the boring and the bizarre:

1] Two of my greatest heroes are naval Commodore Uriah Levy [his duel in 1816 with William Potter shows his incredible bravery] and another brave fighter against prejudice Baseball legend Jackie Robinson.

2] My childhood home was directly opposite the road in which Detective Jack Whicher of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale lived in the 1830s.

3] I went to the same school as Raymond Chandler and P.G.Wodehouse though not at the same time. I found out about those 'mean streets' Chandler was talking about and played Rugby, Cricket and Athletics. Hard to believe now but I could run fast, it is surprising how much 50 years and 15 kilograms will slow you down. 

4] I once was a pawn up playing a future Chess  Grandmaster.  I lost.

5] My distinguished amateur dramatics career included playing Christy Dudgeon, the submissive nitwick brother, in George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, and Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream. 

I also played seven of the eight male parts in a radio play for a college project. The eighth male part was for the young handsome hero; I could not get that part even though I had the ideal face for radio. I was becoming typecast. 

6] I am a bit of an American Civil War buff and have dragged my wife round a lot of the battlefields, even to Perryville and Fort Donelson. Our guide at Gettysburg asked me if I knew as much about English history as I did about American. I said 'no' as we have a lot more history to remember than the Americans. 

7] My mother once told Mick Jagger he was mean and with all his money should buy a more expensive item. He had asked her if there was a cheaper saucepan in stock at my parent's shop in the Kings Road, Chelsea.

8] I could eat fish for every meal, every day, and luckily I now live close to the sea.

9] I once lost my job to a 'friend' who a few months later murdered his wife. A very sad story [the murder not me losing the job], which even after many years sends a shiver down my spine. 

10] I used to worry about being short, now I worry about important things like breathing.

11] I have only travelled to 13 countries, but have visited 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. 

12] I was in Chelsea in October 1981 visiting my parents when the IRA bombed the Chelsea Barracks, and in November 1981 at home in Wimbledon when the IRA bombed the house of Attorney General Sir Michael Havers. 

I learned that bombs sound very loud even if they are a mile away.

13] My son worked in Canada, Dubai and Hong Kong during 2008. My daughter worked in Swindon. I just hope they will have jobs in 2009.

14] I once won a competition and the prize was the cost of our weeks holiday in Florence returned back to us in travel vouchers. Which meant we had to go on a free holiday to Rome.

15] I was on an advisory committee that voted 16-1 to close down a major London hospital. I am not offering any prizes for naming the awkward short bearded guy who was the one solitary vote to keep it open.

16] My wife is a 'professional' author, having received payment for an article in a very erudite magazine making me proud and a teeny bit jealous. 

Well that wasn't too painful and I will tag Jeff back. 

Now to finish reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson's brilliant sequel to the rather disappointing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

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.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE WEBSITE

Iain at Quercus has asked me to direct readers to a new web site devoted to The Girl Who Played With Fire here. There will be more content over the next few months but there is already a link to Maxine's Euro Crime review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

THE SWEDISH APACHE

There is an interesting post at Scandinavian Crime Fiction that refers to a discussion by Mike Carlson here as to the reason why Nordic crime has attracted all this current attention from UK journalists.

The key section selected by Barbara at Scandinavian Crime Fiction  is "But it remains puzzling to me why, that when contemporary British writers have done so much to move their genre into more challenging territory it takes two Swedes [Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson ?] to get British critics to notice." 

I think the answer is simple, the media pick on something as the flavour of the moment, and in the process they drain the story of every drop of vitality they can and then they abandon it and move on. 

In their view British crime fiction has been around a long while, it has been on television in various guises for many years and therefore is not as newsworthy as something new such as Swedish crime fiction. [I have noted that two of my first creaking blog posts back in September 2006 referred to Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo]

The critics think here is a 'new TV series' with a 'new detective' Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, and which is set in a beautiful location, so we must write about it. The fact that the televised Mankell books were published in English between ten and six years ago is irrelevant. 

In the case of  Stieg Larsson the interest has undoubtedly been stimulated as a result of three factors: he died tragically young, the advertising campaign, and the unique character Lisbeth Salander. 

Will the professional journalists/critics move on to all the other Scandinavian crime writers who have not been televised and who have not been the beneficiary of a Stieg Larsson like marketing campaign [well deserved on the evidence of The Girl Who Played with Fire] ? 

I very much doubt it as the media are quite fickle, but unfortunately the problems dealt with in the books concerning the breakdown of society, single parenthood, gangs, abuse, immigration and drugs are with us for the long haul. 

In 1990 when Sweden was probably a more homogeneous population a Sami, who was very drunk, started a conversation with us on a train from Uppsala to Stockholm. He complained that he was a 'Swedish Apache', a depressed and oppressed minority in his own country. We were rather shocked because that winter we had seen a beautiful country, which appeared snow white in more than one sense, a country where even the bag ladies dressed smartly. We were relieved that this was a short journey because he was very drunk, but as we were about to leave the train he said "if you are going to be oppressed this is the best country in the world to be oppressed."

Perhaps a lot of the interest in Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson is caused by the fact that the liberal media still believe that Sweden is some sort of socialist utopia and are intrigued by the concept that it is a 'real' country.    

WHO IS LISBETH SALANDER?

Update: This blog is now dormant but you can read all the old posts and lots of new material at Crime Scraps Review. Please join me there.

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

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.

TOO GOOD NOT TO MENTION

The problems with 'best' or 'most enjoyable' lists is that so many really good books get left off for minor reasons. Books that are just as good as the chosen ones but require a little bit extra concentration to read or books that are brilliantly written but perhaps you don't quite agree with their political message or just great books that you read early in the year and were pushed out by books read much later in the year. That happens with us over 60s as our memory falters. I find I can remember events and books I read 50 years ago but not something that happened 3 months ago. 

So here are some more really excellent books that I read during the year. 

A Vengeful Longing: Roger Morris

Mistress of the Art of Death: Ariana Franklin

The Bellini Card: Jason Goodwin

Darkness Rising: Frank Tallis [review to appear on Euro Crime in 2009]

March Violets: Philip Kerr

Via Delle Oche: Carlo Lucarelli

The Big O: Declan Burke

Cross: Ken Bruen

The Paper Moon: Andrea Camilleri

The Serbian Dane: Leif Davidsen

Detective Inspector Irene Huss: Helene Tursten

The Ice Princess: Camilla Lackberg

Paradise: Liza Marklund

The Girl of his Dreams: Donna Leon

Lorrraine Connection: Dominique Manotti

Three to Kill: Jean-Patrick Manchette

The Cat Trap: K.T.McCaffrey

and last but certainly not least

The Hidden Assassins: Robert Wilson

What a lot of good books and I still haven't mentioned my five top of the year selections. 

I will be back next year with an interesting Camberwell criminal connection, a review of a review that indicates the death of 'Liberal England', the quiz answers, a review of The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, and my best five books of 2008. 

I wish everyone a very Happy Healthy and hopefully Prosperous New Year.