The film based on Stieg Larsson's global phenomenon The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is set to hit U.S. theaters tomorrow on limited release. It's a Swedish production that's already found an audience of 6 million people in more than 25 countries.
Dragon Tattoo is a crime thriller novel that follows Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist investigating the disappearance of 16-year-old Harriet Vanger, who vanished 40 years ago. Mikael teams up with Lisbeth Salander, a cyberpunk misfit. The pair represents the classic detective duo, albeit with a few modern kinks.
Larsson's sexy, gritty novel is impossible to put down. Yet it offers more than just a fast-paced action novel, weaving in literary references to authors ranging from Agatha Christie to Astrid Lindgren, representing a rare hybrid between smart literature and detective thriller.
Beyond the mystery detailed in the novel itself is the obscurity surrounding its author. Larsson never saw his book published; he passed away in 2004, a year before Dragon Tattoo hit shelves. Larsson, who was a proclaimed Trotskyistand the controversial editor of an investigative journalism magazine, lived under constant death threats - leading to speculations that the heart attack that caused his death was not natural. Coupled with the nearly unanimous critical praise and the incredible global sales of Dragon Tattoo, Larsson's death turned him into a figure of mythic proportions, much as Heath Ledger was during the buzz that surrounded him leading up to the release of The Dark Knight.
I blasted through both Dragon Tattoo and its sequel The Girl Who Played with Fire and am anxiously awaiting May 25, the release date for the U.S. version of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the last book in the trilogy. Speculation about his death aside, Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" stands on its own as a clever set of books that represents a new age of global novels that transcend international boundaries.
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