Every mystery has a beginning and an end.
And every mystery leads to the end of some or the other search.
While some mysteries lead to the hunt of a treasure or a secret, some others lead to an understanding or a realization, an insight or an observation.
In the same vein, some mysteries lead to the unfolding and revelation of something which causes us to wonder and wish, that it’d have been better if the pandora’s box of this mystery would have remained locked shut forever…because to glare at the revealed discovery, is probably too astronomical an appearance to assimilate all at once.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson too is one of those mysteries that is as spine-chilling as intensely appaling.
It is a heart-thumping jigsaw puzzle sketched from a labyrinthine storyline of several interlinked mysteries, revolving mainly around the lives of the characters Mikael Blomkvist (a journalist and part editor of Millenium magazine), Lisbeth Salander (a clever hacker and a star-rated freelance researcher who works for a security company) and Vanger family consisting of hundreds of family members, who occupy the entire estate of Hedeby Island in Sweden.
The mystery number one reveals itself when Mikael writes and publishes an article about the financial corruption of a top-spot business empire owned by Wennerström. Followed by the release of this article in public, Mikael is sued with several false allegations that could be equally damaging to his reputation as to the sales of Millenium magazine which is partly owned by him. Like an abrupt flip-flop of events, Mikael gets himself embrolled and entangled in a lawsuit against the CEO of Wennerström business empire.
The mystery number two presents itself to Mikael in the form of a phone call. A phone call from a person named Dirch Frode, who is the official lawyer of an eighty-year old man named Henrik Vanger. Henrik Vanger is the owner of Vanger Corporation, which is one of the wealthiest and another top-spot business empires.
Henrik Vanger has been looking to hire Mikael for the job of solving two mysteries for him. These mysteries were linked to a series of events which occurred nearly forty years ago. One event concerned the strange disappearance of Henrik’s granddaughter Harriet, who was sixteen year old at the time when she disappeared all of a sudden 40 years ago.
Apparently, the mystery of her disappearance seemed to be interconnected with yet another mystery, which was the ‘The Case of The Pressed Flowers’. The 80-year old Henrik Vanger told Blomkvist that it was only his grandniece Harriet who used to gift him these framed flowers each year on his birthday. And so, receiving these flowers every year after her disappearance was a sign that indicated that someone knew this secret about Harriet and that someone was trying to torment him with these flowers - these flowers framed in portraits, wrapped as his birthday gifts and sent to him from various places and from an unknown sender....
He further told Mikael that it was his anticipation that Harriet didn’t only disappear just like that, but rather she was murdered, and that too by one of the members of the Vanger family. And he was almost certain of this suspicion.
And so, Mikael was hired for the job of solving these mysteries for Mister Vanger, in return of which, he’d be paid a mammoth sum, as well as provided some good evidence against Wennerström, which could help him drop out of the lawsuit.
This was meant to be a cold case, for which Mikael would stay away from the town, in a cottage in Hedeby Island for an year, in order to carry out a thorough research of all the members of Vanger family, concerning the mystery. Though, reluctant at first, Mikael agreed to take up the job on the thought that solving these cases would help him save his reputation and get him out of the Wennerström lawsuit.
As he began his research, Mikael discovered that most if not all the members of the Vanger family turned out to be somewhat strange, weird, unusually freaky, bizarre and aloof to the point of stirring his curious idiosyncrasy.
Overwhelmed by the information of his research, soon enough, he also hired an assistant to work with him on this mystery. The assistant was Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth was a freelance researcher who worked for Dragan Armansky, the CEO of Milton Security, a company which offered a variety of security-related products and services. Though seemingly introverted, socially-absent, hard-nosed, emotionally unresponsive and almost psychopathic as she appeared to be, but according to Armansky, she was one of the most brilliant, and gifted investigative researchers he had ever come across. This girl with a dragon tattoo perched in glaze on her shoulder…
Guess what, she was a genius hacker too…
Even Mikael, during their work, was surprised to notice her sharp photographic memory and her excellent research reports, that he couldn’t deny but only appreciate her brains even more.
However only, Lisbeth’s sharp brains hadn’t prevented her from getting labeled by the law as ‘psychologically disordered’ personality, the consequence of which was that her life was taken under the control of a guardianship agency, where, paradoxically, the guardian would exploit her dependance and reputation for their personal interests.
Lisbeth liked working with Mikael, because according to her, he was one of those persons who treated her like a human. She dedicated days and weeks and months to tracing the archives and researching the internet, trying to sew together the scattered clumps of mystery one way or the other…
Followed by a gigantic research work and a few startling clues, Mikael and Lisbeth arrive at a baffling discovery. A cruel reality of sadism, victimhood, cult superstition and criminal activity resulting from these tendencies.
As it turned out in the end, the criminal behind Harriet’s disappearance revealed to be none other than a member of Vanger’s family. Harriet’s own brother, Martin Vanger.
Martin was years ago initiated by their father Gottfried Vanger, who was possessed by a sadistic tendency to torture and murder women. Gottfried, who was Henrik’s brother’s son, was a man who hated women. And he in turn taught his son to hate women. This, led to a series of murders which Lisbeth and Mikael discovered while researching the mystery…
Martin is revealed to be a seriel murderer and criminal, who even had a private torture chamber where he tortured women, slaughtering and murdering them to bits and pieces.
But this is not all. The story cascades into a series of more stunning secrets and collapsing realities that unfold gradually.
The novel is a chilling psychological thriller that combines a murder mystery, the psychopathology of cultish sadism and plenty of financial tidbits. But it is also a story of one-sided love – the love that Lisbeth feels for Mikael but that which is an impossibility.
The novel is
not only entertaining
but absolutely thrilling
and more than anything else, whackingly heartbreaking.
The book was published posthumously in 2005 after author’s death in 2004, and was an instant bestseller internationally, This particular edition is an English-translated version, but the original novel was penned in Swedish language, the original title for which is ‘Men Who Hate Women’.
A drastic depiction of the horrible reality of a world sooted with pathological tendencies innate of human organism. The storyline also hits at the ugly consequences that result from twisted misinterpretations of religious scriptures. From a creative writer’s perspective, the book features a regular third-person narrative, with descriptions neither too bland nor too verbose. The dialogues are painted with a writing style that crisply highlights character-specific voice expressions, which seems to add a dramatic and immersive effect for the reader.
All in all, the book is one of the most intriguing works of crime fiction and psychological thrillers.
Thank you,
Neha
Read all the review pieces written by me! | Follow on Goodreads!
Subscribe: Neha's Notebook | My Little library | Raindrop Stories
And every mystery leads to the end of some or the other search.
While some mysteries lead to the hunt of a treasure or a secret, some others lead to an understanding or a realization, an insight or an observation.
In the same vein, some mysteries lead to the unfolding and revelation of something which causes us to wonder and wish, that it’d have been better if the pandora’s box of this mystery would have remained locked shut forever…because to glare at the revealed discovery, is probably too astronomical an appearance to assimilate all at once.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson too is one of those mysteries that is as spine-chilling as intensely appaling.
It is a heart-thumping jigsaw puzzle sketched from a labyrinthine storyline of several interlinked mysteries, revolving mainly around the lives of the characters Mikael Blomkvist (a journalist and part editor of Millenium magazine), Lisbeth Salander (a clever hacker and a star-rated freelance researcher who works for a security company) and Vanger family consisting of hundreds of family members, who occupy the entire estate of Hedeby Island in Sweden.
The mystery number one reveals itself when Mikael writes and publishes an article about the financial corruption of a top-spot business empire owned by Wennerström. Followed by the release of this article in public, Mikael is sued with several false allegations that could be equally damaging to his reputation as to the sales of Millenium magazine which is partly owned by him. Like an abrupt flip-flop of events, Mikael gets himself embrolled and entangled in a lawsuit against the CEO of Wennerström business empire.
The mystery number two presents itself to Mikael in the form of a phone call. A phone call from a person named Dirch Frode, who is the official lawyer of an eighty-year old man named Henrik Vanger. Henrik Vanger is the owner of Vanger Corporation, which is one of the wealthiest and another top-spot business empires.
Henrik Vanger has been looking to hire Mikael for the job of solving two mysteries for him. These mysteries were linked to a series of events which occurred nearly forty years ago. One event concerned the strange disappearance of Henrik’s granddaughter Harriet, who was sixteen year old at the time when she disappeared all of a sudden 40 years ago.
Apparently, the mystery of her disappearance seemed to be interconnected with yet another mystery, which was the ‘The Case of The Pressed Flowers’. The 80-year old Henrik Vanger told Blomkvist that it was only his grandniece Harriet who used to gift him these framed flowers each year on his birthday. And so, receiving these flowers every year after her disappearance was a sign that indicated that someone knew this secret about Harriet and that someone was trying to torment him with these flowers - these flowers framed in portraits, wrapped as his birthday gifts and sent to him from various places and from an unknown sender....
He further told Mikael that it was his anticipation that Harriet didn’t only disappear just like that, but rather she was murdered, and that too by one of the members of the Vanger family. And he was almost certain of this suspicion.
And so, Mikael was hired for the job of solving these mysteries for Mister Vanger, in return of which, he’d be paid a mammoth sum, as well as provided some good evidence against Wennerström, which could help him drop out of the lawsuit.
This was meant to be a cold case, for which Mikael would stay away from the town, in a cottage in Hedeby Island for an year, in order to carry out a thorough research of all the members of Vanger family, concerning the mystery. Though, reluctant at first, Mikael agreed to take up the job on the thought that solving these cases would help him save his reputation and get him out of the Wennerström lawsuit.
As he began his research, Mikael discovered that most if not all the members of the Vanger family turned out to be somewhat strange, weird, unusually freaky, bizarre and aloof to the point of stirring his curious idiosyncrasy.
Overwhelmed by the information of his research, soon enough, he also hired an assistant to work with him on this mystery. The assistant was Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth was a freelance researcher who worked for Dragan Armansky, the CEO of Milton Security, a company which offered a variety of security-related products and services. Though seemingly introverted, socially-absent, hard-nosed, emotionally unresponsive and almost psychopathic as she appeared to be, but according to Armansky, she was one of the most brilliant, and gifted investigative researchers he had ever come across. This girl with a dragon tattoo perched in glaze on her shoulder…
Guess what, she was a genius hacker too…
Even Mikael, during their work, was surprised to notice her sharp photographic memory and her excellent research reports, that he couldn’t deny but only appreciate her brains even more.
However only, Lisbeth’s sharp brains hadn’t prevented her from getting labeled by the law as ‘psychologically disordered’ personality, the consequence of which was that her life was taken under the control of a guardianship agency, where, paradoxically, the guardian would exploit her dependance and reputation for their personal interests.
Lisbeth liked working with Mikael, because according to her, he was one of those persons who treated her like a human. She dedicated days and weeks and months to tracing the archives and researching the internet, trying to sew together the scattered clumps of mystery one way or the other…
Followed by a gigantic research work and a few startling clues, Mikael and Lisbeth arrive at a baffling discovery. A cruel reality of sadism, victimhood, cult superstition and criminal activity resulting from these tendencies.
As it turned out in the end, the criminal behind Harriet’s disappearance revealed to be none other than a member of Vanger’s family. Harriet’s own brother, Martin Vanger.
Martin was years ago initiated by their father Gottfried Vanger, who was possessed by a sadistic tendency to torture and murder women. Gottfried, who was Henrik’s brother’s son, was a man who hated women. And he in turn taught his son to hate women. This, led to a series of murders which Lisbeth and Mikael discovered while researching the mystery…
Martin is revealed to be a seriel murderer and criminal, who even had a private torture chamber where he tortured women, slaughtering and murdering them to bits and pieces.
But this is not all. The story cascades into a series of more stunning secrets and collapsing realities that unfold gradually.
The novel is a chilling psychological thriller that combines a murder mystery, the psychopathology of cultish sadism and plenty of financial tidbits. But it is also a story of one-sided love – the love that Lisbeth feels for Mikael but that which is an impossibility.
The novel is
not only entertaining
but absolutely thrilling
and more than anything else, whackingly heartbreaking.
The book was published posthumously in 2005 after author’s death in 2004, and was an instant bestseller internationally, This particular edition is an English-translated version, but the original novel was penned in Swedish language, the original title for which is ‘Men Who Hate Women’.
A drastic depiction of the horrible reality of a world sooted with pathological tendencies innate of human organism. The storyline also hits at the ugly consequences that result from twisted misinterpretations of religious scriptures. From a creative writer’s perspective, the book features a regular third-person narrative, with descriptions neither too bland nor too verbose. The dialogues are painted with a writing style that crisply highlights character-specific voice expressions, which seems to add a dramatic and immersive effect for the reader.
All in all, the book is one of the most intriguing works of crime fiction and psychological thrillers.
Thank you,
Neha
Read all the review pieces written by me! | Follow on Goodreads!
Subscribe: Neha's Notebook | My Little library | Raindrop Stories
Very creative
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