"Men That Hate Women" (Warning: This Post Contains Spoilers about a Mystery)

In Sweden, the book was titled, "Men That Hate Women." We read it as "The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo." This was the first of three books that author Stieg Larsson wrote before he died from a heart attack. The story was interesting, exciting, and unique. Everyone at the meeting said they had enjoyed the book!

The style of this book was a little different from many modern novels. The author switched back and forth to different characters, but he generally switched during a calm part of the story, rather than creating a cliffhanger and then switching. Exciting twists and turns of the story were completed, if not totally resolved. Some of us felt that this made the story easier to follow. It was a complex story with numerous characters, places, events, and points of view. The fact that it was exciting and yet reasonably easy to follow added to the pleasure of reading the story.

One of our members felt that Blomqvist's noncommittal relationships with women, along with the depravity of some of the villains of the story, indicated that the author had a negative attitude toward women. Most others disagreed, feeling that the Blomqvist character was realistic rather than negative. Also, we mentioned the statistics at the beginnings of chapters about crime against women, which seemed to show that the author was trying to promote awareness of these problems of in society.

We didn't have many unanswered questions with this story. However, I raised a question which we were unable to resolve during the meeting. I suggested that there might have been an inconsistency, in that no one recognized Martin in the photo that showed his distinctive jacket with the red patches. Looking back at the book, I found that Blomqvist had showed the photo to Frode, and Frode had not known who it was. Blomqvist planned to show the photo to Henrik but had not gotten a chance before Anna, Henrik's housekeeper, recognized the jacket in the photo as belonging to Martin.

Another question I had was why Salander had destroyed so much evidence. I don't think she was trying to save the Vanger family. Was it merely selfish, in not wanting a big story to potentially involve her? Did she feel that it would be best that the families of these unfortunate women ever found out what had happened? I think the implication was that it was because she was in love with Blomqvist and wanted to save him from having to disclose the embarrassing episode in Martin's torture chamber. Any other ideas?