hnpcc | Millennium, books 1 and 2

So I've read two of the three Millennium books.

A friend of mine compared Stieg Larsson to Dan Brown, which heh. I think Larsson's a better writer, but I can certainly see where she's coming from.

My problems so far have been more plot-wise:

Book 1.

The psychology of the plot didn't work for me at all. I was actually fine with the story until they did the first big reveal, whereupon it got stupid. (Then it got stupider.) I just couldn't see people reacting in the ways that they had 40 years earlier, and once you lose suspension of disbelief for that then nothing really works. More detail:

*So everyone in the village knows that the Hero is sleeping with one of the family he's investigating, because it's a small village and there's bugger all else to do but keep tabs on people. Which does beg the question of how they missed the serial killer living in their midst for 40 years, and his arriving with and disposing of bodies. You think someone might have noticed that.

*The initial series of crimes were... um... quite sensational. Obviously Swedish tabloid papers are different from Australian tabloids - if there was an unsolved murder with sensational elements you can bet your life that every report would have referenced all the other unsolved murders with sensational elements that had happened recently (as in, within the last 10 years definitely and possibly 50 years. The pajama girl murder still keeps being brought up and that was in the 1930s.) Hell, you can't read a gangland murder without there being a complete history of everything that happened in the last 15 years, and every murder of a young, single woman brings up a table of similar unsolved murders. Anything with as many sensational features as these murders would be brought up Every Single Time an even vaguely similar murder occurred. As I said, 1960s Swedish newspapers appear remarkably incurious.

*So Gottfried was wandering around killing people in biblically literal ways and apparently no one notices he's (a) seriously batshit crazy and (b) in the vicinity every time one of these sensational murders occurs. (Sweden's police force are also notably incurious.) Gottfried's also abusing his son, and turning him into a serial killer. Psychology fail number one for me. Gottfried's also abusing his daughter and encouraging his son to abuse his daughter. The son enthusiastically complies. Psychology fail #2. The daughter tries to tell people about her brother's abuse, and after approximately 5 minutes of trying decides her only option is to hide. Psychology fail #3 - surely she'd either not have tried or tried a bit harder? I dunno, a lot of this just didn't work for me.

*I also guessed that Gottfried had been murdered, oh, the first time they mentioned the specifics of his death. Really, it shouldn't be that easy!! (OK, I didn't guess who exactly murdered him.)

*The daughter turns up in Woop Woop ("Makawaka"), Queensland. The Hero takes a flight from Europe to Singapore to Brisbane... and then discovers how big Queensland actually is. Instead of booking a flight with one of the commercial flights going to Longreach and then getting to Woop Woop from there he decides to charter a flight... to Longreach. Why not charter the bloody thing all the way to the sheep station? Dean felt that I was being too critical and that you can't expect a Swede to have picked this up. I don't think that this would be that difficult to research on the internet.

*The girl with the dragon tattoo. I quite liked her. Mysterious, super-hacker and close to batshit crazy. And yet, and yet. I felt that some things were very close to being gratuitous, which made it difficult.

I liked most of the book, but the finish was stupid. I think knowing the background story of the author didn't help - you can pick his pet topics much more quickly and then you notice how plugged they are. Also I'd read pretty much every book Blomkvist reads during the course of his investigation... and I could pick where a lot of the ideas came from. Hm.

Book 2

*Those initial chapters in the Caribbean added nothing and could have been chucked. Weird start. Ditto all the mathematical bits, which, you know, whatever.

*The Hero has shacked up with pretty much every woman mentioned in book 1 so far, with the notable exception of the lesbian (thank God). Seriously, mention a vaguely heterosexual woman and suddenly he's in bed with her. OK, he didn't shack up with Mia, and hasn't yet shacked up with either the police officer or the new hire at Millennium. Next book, I bet.

*The whole plot of this book didn't actually do much for me. Too many stupid conspiracies, too much coincidence. Meh. And the albino giant didn't help.

*OK, the finale was just ridiculous. I got Dean to read the initial description of what happened, and then the explanation of why that didn't happen... and it doesn't work. The initial description is of a heavier weapon. I also think that if you're injured enough that you're unconscious then you probably shouldn't be able to dig your way out of your own grave. Especially when you consider the head injury.

Also you'd think the people chucking you in the grave might notice you're still breathing and take steps to make sure that wasn't the case before they buried you.

All the back story of the dragon tattoo ended up just irritating me. Particularly when Lisbeth turned into Buffy. Which happened early on in book 1 and then became more and more blatantly obvious toward the end. Seriously, superpowers just get stupid.

All in all the second book also had a good set up but the denoument was again just stupid, leaving me knowing I'm going to read the third book (OK, I want to see how they resolve the cliffhanger) but grateful that there aren't any more after that.

Is Larsson the Swedish Dan Brown? Yes and no. I can see elements of similarity, but he's a better writer and the mysteries are better set up (if annoyingly resolved.) Larsson has a better grasp of physics though, and has failed to make me laugh out loud for several minutes the way Brown did.

Either way both have been stunningly successful. Then again, so's Matthew Reilly, God alone knows why.