Lilac & Ivy

I picked up this book at the recommendation of Erin of Elements of Style. She’s posted a few books she’s read and they are all on track with what I like so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I’m so glad I did!

Synopsis:
Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family’s remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden’s dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman.

Review:
This book is a very smart thriller. After reading the first page, there was no turning back! With twists and turns, author  Stieg Larsson introduces different story lines that are totally unexpected and fit so perfectly. I found Larsson’s writing to be very easy to follow and I found myself genuinely liking several characters. The book isn’t short (clocking in around 500 pages) and I found the climax to feel a bit rushed, but the book definitely leaves you wanting more. Thankfully there’s two more books written by Larsson. Unfortunately, he passed away before he ever saw the success of his books and leaves us with just this trilogy.

**** 1/2 of 5 stars

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 10:34 am and is filed under Read. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.