Sunday, January 15, 2012

Millennium series...

The Millennium series is a series of bestselling novels originally written in Swedish by the late Stieg Larsson (1954-2004).

There are three books in the series:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor, literally Men Who Hate Women) (2005)
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden, literally The Girl Who Played with the Fire) (2006)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes, literally The Cloud Castle that was Blown Up) (2007)

The books lodge in the hearts and minds of readers, and it is difficult to put them down.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; revolves around The Industrialist-Henrik Vanger, The Journalist-Mikael Blomkvist and the enigmatic, delinquent and dangerous security specialist-The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo-Lisbeth Salander.

There is a flower delivered to Henrik Vanger every year, and he is sad, as his brothers daughter (he himself did not have any) Harriet was missing since 1966. A family tree explaining the relationships of five generations of the Vanger family is given in the beginning.

Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of Millennium magazine, loses a libel case involving allegations he published about billionaire financier Hans-Erik Wennerström. Lisbeth Salander is a surveillance agent contracted to investigate Blomkvist. Salander delivers a comprehensive report on Blomkvist to a lawyer, Dirch Frode , on behalf of his only client, 82-year-old Henrik Vanger. Vanger hires Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his great-niece, Harriet, who vanished on Children's Day in 1966. Vanger believes that Harriet was murdered by a family member.


After researches, Mikael and Lisbeth discovers the truth. He flies to Australia and discovers Harriet living under her cousin Anita's name. He returns her to Sweden to be reunited with Henrik. Harriet reveals that she killed her father Gottfried, who, along with her brother Martin, had been sexually abusing her. Fearing for her life when she saw Martin at the Children's Day parade, she fled the estate with Anita's help.

As per the earlier contract, Henrik now did not want the family biography to be printed or truth to be revealed; and he is of not much help with Wennerstrom.

Blomkvist publishes a new story on Wennerström in Millennium, which is a sensation. Wennerström is found dead, and his offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands is raided. The police suspect a young woman caught on CCTV. Blomkvist is convinced that she is Salander in disguise.

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Crime against women in Sweden, Mathematics, and Women in war; were the introduction to each sections in the same order, in the three books.

‘The girl who played with fire’, was an insight into the story of Lisbeth Salander, and was just allright, not as interesting as the other two. But ‘The Girl who kicked the Hornets’Nest’, brought back the fire.

Every country will have their own hidden, political polemic; but very few, will have Journalist/writer like Larson with the guts, desire and the ability to bring it out, in an interesting way. Linder, Berger, Sagpo..each interesting in their own way.

Very sad, that Salander and Blomkvist will have no further adventure from Stieg Larson. It is shocking to know about the death of the author Stieg Larsson himself, a great talent of the contemporary crime fiction. Are’nt there are very high probability, that he would have been killed, and Mikael Blomkvist character, do have his shades?

My roommates wanted to kill the author for driving me crazy with the book; but sorry that the author is no more, they are looking for the person who had lend me the book.

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