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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 23 |
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THE DRAGON TATTOO
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is already a screen event
of TheColumnists.com
Stieg Larsson's phenomenal international best-seller "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (Knopf, $24.95) had been tempting me for months from the shelves of hard cover sensations at my favorite book store, so I finally succumbed and bought it. Wham-Bam! The minute I started reading, I was sucked into the vortex.
Larsson's book is a whirlwind read and introduces one of the truly great new "detective" heroes in modern mystery fiction--Lisbeth Salander, an anorexic young woman with a troubled past, a voracious sexual appetite for a girl who's been molested and abused for much of her life, a photographic memory and computer skills that rank her among the most nefarious of hackers anywhere on planet Earth.
What happens when she most accidentally teams up with disgraced investigative reporter Mikael Blomqvist to try and solve a 40-year-old murder mystery is absolutely fascinating. Talk about your literary roller coaster rides! Whoa, don't even dream about unfastening your safety belts at any of the book's unexpected curves.
As I devoured the novel during the past week, my mind raced ahead. Boy, does this cry out for a sequel, I thought. And--wow!, what a movie this would make!--was my next thought. Then, the book finished and the pages still smoking, I did a little research and had my mind appropriately blown.
I'd naturally assumed the late 2008 publication of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in America meant the book probably came out in the author's native Sweden earlier that year--or possibly in 2007. I googled Larsson and was stunned to discover that he died of a massive heart attack in 2004, just after delivering the manuscript to his publisher--along with the manuscripts for two sequels. He never saw the 2005 publication of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" nor its takeoff as one of the literary sensations first of Europe, then pretty much the rest of the world.
And here's the really amazing part: This was Larsson's first novel. Though he was one of Sweden's most celebrated agitators and crusading journalists, nobody had a clue that he would be such a polished author of fictional thrillers from the very start.
Had he lived, Larsson would now be elbowing his way in among the Dan Browns, J.K. Rowlings and Stephenie Meyers as one of the publishing phenoms of the 21st century. His follow-up novel, "The Girl Who Played With Fire," will be published in the U.S. later this year and has already become a foreign best-seller. The first novel already has been filmed as a two-part television movie, but is being released first to theaters. It premiered in January in Sweden and in March in Denmark, Norway and Finland. It's English language release in the U.S. has not been announced yet.
The movie is the first of three to be made by Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev from the three finished books Larsson left behind. The production company is Yellow Bird, which made the Scandinavian versions of the "Wallander" series of novels by Henning Mankell, whose Swedish detective is just now concluding its initial run on PBS stations in the U.S.
Found in Larsson's effects after his death was an incomplete manuscript of a fourth novel in the series and outlines in detail for several more. He had envisioned a series of at least 10 novels. If the movies do as well as expected, somebody is certain to commission writers to complete the novels for subsequent publication--and filming.
I found the first novel to be fresh and
original for several reasons. Lisbeth Salander is a brilliant
character, so quirky that she is considered a wacko by most people
who have anything to do with her. She is incredibly anti-social,
which makes it extremely difficult for her to work as the partner
to a seasoned investigative journalist like Mikael Blomqvist,
who's the publisher and chief reporter for Millennium,
a magazine devoted to exposing corruption in corporate business
in Sweden.
Blomqvist has been set up by a billionaire industrialist he's
been investigating and falls into libelling the tycoon when he
attempts to expose him in print, resulting in a conviction and
a prison term. Before he begins his time behind bars, Blomqvist
is approached by an elderly millionaire business leader who wants
to hire him to investigate what happened to his favorite niece,
who disappeared more than 40 years earlier. Blomqvist has nowhere
else to go anyway, having agreed to step down as editor of Millennium,
and he's offered a huge sum to dig into what turns out to be
a deeply-intriguing case long in the police cold case files.
Salander, in turn, has been hired to investigate Blomqvist, so sooner or later their paths cross and a bizarre affinity develops between them. Their tortured probe into long-dead files and interviews with aged people connected to the missing niece eventually leads them into the domain of horror as they discover a large number of mutilation murders that all seemed linked to their own case.
The thrills just keep on coming, but it's really the growing insight into the workings of the two key characters's minds that makes "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" something far more significant than just another thriller.
So, I'm predicting the phenomenon of what is being called "The Millennium Series" is just going to grow larger as the books reach the American marketplace and the films begin to turn up. If you're a latercomer to all this as I was, don't waste any more time. Get that first book under your belt right now--and brace yourself for all that's going to come after.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted May 29, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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