The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson, Penguin Canada
841 pages, $13.50
“Dazzling…” —The Globe and Mail
“Swedish crime fiction, like the country itself, has both class and a social conscience. It was only a matter of time before it produced its own War and Peace…” —The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
“This novel is almost impossible to put down.”
—Times Colonist (Victoria, B.C.)
“A rip-roaring serial killer adventure.”
—Mail on Sunday (U.K.)
“The ballyhoo is fully justified…”
—The Times (London)
The following quotation is taken from the book’s climactic scene. Blomkvist, the hero, has been captured by the Villain, Martin Vanger, serial killer. Blomkvist is manacled in the theatre of operations in the basement and is about to be buggered before the slicing and dicing proper begin. The Heroine, Salander, has climbed into the house and on her way down to the basement has armed herself with a golf club. She swings and breaks the Villain’s collarbone.
‘Do you like pain, creep?’ Salander said.
Her voice was as rough as sandpaper. As long as Blomkvist lived, he would never forget her face as she went on the attack. Her teeth were bared like a beast of prey. Her eyes were glittering, black as coal. She moved with the lightning speed of a tarantula and seemed totally focused on her prey as she swung the club again….
Oi vey!
“[A]n utterly fresh political and journalistic thriller that is also intimate and moral. In spite of its dark unearthings Steig Larsson has written a feast of a book, with central characters you will not forget.”
—Michael Ondaatje
It sure does make you think, don’t it?
—John Metcalf
Tags: Issue 77