The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

A Lisbeth Salander Novel

By: Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland - translator

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The thrilling first book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series featuring Lisbeth Salander: “Combine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer thriller, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larsson’s first novel” (The New York Times). • Also known as the Millennium series

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

Look for the latest book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, The Girl in the Eagle's Talons, coming soon!

Listen to the rest of The Millennium Trilogy.

©2008 Stieg Larsson (P)2008 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"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 best seller...At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets, this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple." (Publishers Weekly)

"Combine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer thriller, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larsson's first novel." (The New York Times)

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a striking novel. Just when I was thinking there wasn't anything new on the horizon, along comes Stieg Larsson with this wonderfully unique story. I was completely absorbed." (Michael Connelly)

I really enjoyed this story.

After you get past the swedish names that all sound the same, you get immersed into this mystery! I didn't want it to end. I would highly recommend this book. Just don't give up on it in the beginning, the story picks up and moves very fast to the end.

Not what you expect

I suppose I'm with the other reviewers who said this book wasn't exactly what the media hyped it up to be. I guess my assumption was that this would be a straight-forward murder-mystery with all the applicable twists and turns, but it wasn't. Actually, I found this book to be surprisingly intellectual (over my head at times, but the author makes catching up fairly easy w/o being obvious) and riveting. The story is involved to say the least- it's obvious that the author put a lot of time and thought into the characters and story that haunt this book, and his efforts don't go unnoticed as he pulls the reader in and really forces you/me/the reader to identify with the who, what and why of this novel. The book starts off slow (all the books in this series follow the same pattern) but keep reading and I promise you, you won't be disappointed.

Honestly, I think the narrator (Simon Vance) bumps this audiobook from a 4-star rating to a 5-star rating; the voices he does are subtle but effective and his inflection is spot-on. If you like this installment, I encourage you to listen to the next two- you won't regret it.

so good

This was so good, I'm afraid I won't be able to find another as good.

Great Read!!!

Engaging and suspenseful. I highly recommend this book to anyone into murder mystery. Awesome 💯👈🏾

Slow to start...so I had it read to me here.

Would you listen to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo again? Why?

Yes...What I thought was slow and boring at first, I eventually realized was just the formula needed to develop the character in the readers mind...once their shortly before their stories converge...the book just takes off, and I could not put down my iPod!!

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Most definitely. It was mysterious, and creepy, and just enough sexy to hold my interest. This is not usually my genre of books....but I knew if I saw the movie...I would never read or listen to the book....and the book is always better, as everyone knows.

Have you listened to any of Simon Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I am not sure.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Deviance...on so many levels.

Any additional comments?

Only that I cannot wait to listen to the other 2 books in the series.

Couldn't put it down

This is a fantastic listen. Lisbeth Salander is one of those rare characters that are truly unique and that make you wonder how Larsson ever dreamed up such a person. Simon Vance does a superb job with the narration. Be forewarned: as others have mentioned, the book is rather dark and violent. It definitely caused a slightly awkward moment between me and the security guard at work when I was listening to it over my computer speakers one late night and he walked in during an especially explicit and nasty scene. Oops.

Very disappointed . . .

that this book ended. Fortunately, the story effectively continues in "The Girl Who Played with Fire." This is a police procedural novel except that detective is a magazine journalist. What makes it exceptional is the character Lisbeth Salinger who is simply the most remarkable, fascinating character I have ever encountered in fiction.

The reader is also perfect. He is totally into the rhythm and timing of the prose without being noticeable (compare Scott Brick, who is very good but one is always aware Brick is the reader.) He is very good with the female voices. This is one of the best audiobooks I have listened to. I can't wait for the third book in May of 2010.

Great fun

I avoided this series and both films for quite some time because I generally don't like extremely suspenseful and/or violent stories, but finally saw the second version of the film. I enjoyed the film a lot, and so decided to listen to the book. No surprise, of course, to find much more detail and a few unsuspected plot twists in the original. I actually found myself going to the gym more frequently just so I could listen to the next segment of the book! Overall, I found the extensive detail about how various things worked/happened to be quite interesting, and even though I knew the basic plot from the film, the narrative kept me engaged.

I wasn't crazy about the narrator's voicing of the female characters -- too much breathy little-girlishness in all of them. I suppose I can see where this kind of sound makes sense for Salander, but it just didn't work for me. It bothered me enough that I never quite stopped noticing it, but not enough to make me refrain from listening to the rest of the trilogy.

A Great Read

if you're looking for a great read this is a great choice. I was caught up and could not stop listening. Chapter after chapter. Book after book. After the third book. I was sad because book 4 couldn't be published for legal reasons. That was at least three years ago. Book four is out now.

Extraordinary

This is a complex and sophisticated novel with characters that are not at all simplistic. The plot reaches a bit too far at a couple of points, but like other reviewers, I couldn't stop listening. Readers should be forewarned that the book includes some rather graphic descriptions of sex crimes.

This is the first book in Steig Larsson's posthumously published "Millenium Trilogy". The English translation of the second book, "The Girl Who Played with Fire", was released in January, and I'm sorry to see that it isn't on Audible yet. There is an audio version -- probably abridged -- read by Martin Wenner.

The English translation of the third book "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" is expected sometime in the fall. Sadly, these are the only novels that we will have from Larsson.