The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I’ve had this on my reading list for  a while, but decided to move it up both because I enjoyed my last murder mystery so much and so I could finally watch and compare the Swedish and English versions of the film. I haven’t watched them yet, but I may do a comparison review once I do. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a 590 page mystery novel.

I really enjoyed the way this book started out — with the mystery of receiving a pressed and framed flower every year on the receiver’s birthday. Was it a taunt? Was it a hint or secret? I couldn’t tell, and so it was a great way to get me interested in the mystery.

I felt like there were two simultaneous plots going on in this book. The first and most (?) important was that of the mystery of Harriet Vanger and Henrik Vanger’s searching for her. The Vangers live on an island and were having a reunion of sorts one day when suddenly people start noticing that Harriet has been missing all day, and no one knows where she has gone. Due to a convenient accident on the only bridge leading off the island, many are led to believe she has been murdered and the body hidden.

The second main plot is that of Mikael Blomkvist and his vendetta through the Millenium (his paper) against Erik Wennerström. In the beginning of the novel, he publishes a piece accusing Wennerström of financial misdealings, and is slapped with a libel suit and loses. So his acceptance of taking on the Harriet Vanger case rides heavily on his need to get away from the paper for a while.

After everything to do with the mystery is solved or tidied up or has at least of semblance of being so, they finally take care of Blomkvist’s Wennerström problems. The last 90 pages of the book were probably my favorite. Although the murder mystery was interesting, I did not feel like I could have solved it (though my vague guesses in the beginning weren’t too far off the mark). So the parts dealing with Wennerström, who was a frustrating character, were really satisfying.

One thing I don’t really understand is why most of the ‘strong’ female characters want to have sex with Blomkvist. I really just don’t get it. They are all really frank and open about their sexuality, which is great, but I didn’t see it as very plausible. Or maybe I just wanted one strong female character who was satisfied by someone else or by other interests. This isn’t a major issue, but I feel it’s worth mentioning.

Although I did enjoy most of the characters and felt the narrative really fit their personalities, the story moved a little slowly for my tastes. It was by no means a hassle to try to finish the book, but I was also not riveted into staying up all night to finish it.  Overall, this was a solid book, and I can definitely see why it was adapted into multiple films. It was interesting, and I will probably end up reading the rest of the trilogy at some point, but I’m not so invested in the characters that I feel I have to read them any time soon. If you’re a big fan of mysteries, I would feel comfortable recommending this to you… but then you’ve probably already read it, eh?

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

I read this book on a suggestion from a good review from Adam over at Reviews and Ramblings and borrowed it from Liz over at mylivereads. I don’t read mysteries often, and it has been years since I’ve read an Agatha Christie book, though I can’t remember one that I didn’t enjoy.

The basic premise of this novel is that ten strangers (well, eight strangers and one married couple) are invited for various reasons to come to the infamous Indian Island. The island’s owner, U.N. Owen has sent personal letters to these people asking them to arrive on the same date. Once the ten guests get to the island, they find that their host is absent and they have to entertain themselves. Early on in the story, a gramophone is played, and the voice on it announces that each person on the island is guilty of murder.

Even though each character got a little unique description in the beginning, and their murders are described through interesting internal monologue, I had a hard time keeping them straight. Lucky for me, they started dying off pretty quickly. After it got down to seven people alive, everyone had pretty well-developed personalities, and I started trying to figure out who the killer was. Agatha Christie is a master of suspense in this novel. She heaps suspicion on everyone, so even though I picked one person who I thought was the culprit, I was always suspicious of at least three other people at the same time.

I never thought I would claim a book to be a fast-paced murder mystery, but this novel definitely fits that description. It only took me a couple days to read because the mystery was set up extremely well, so I was always kept guessing. I feel comfortable saying that I did NOT guess the murderer’s identity correctly. Once the number of guests dwindled, I got to learn more about each guests personality, which was fun and added a strong human element to the story, and also made it that much more difficult to guess who the killer was. If you enjoy murder mysteries (and really, even if you don’t), I highly recommend reading this novel.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Develops and Where it Can Lead by Heinrich Böll

I read this novella (103 pages) for my film and literature class, and we watched the film in class. It’s about an almost prudish girl who spends the night with a supposed terrorist and gets a ton of negative media coverage for it, which is corrosive to her life.

This book was surprisingly interesting. It had really short chapters — some less than a page, most containing police-report like narrative about events going on around Katharina Blum.

There weren’t too many memorable characters in this novella, as the only two people I really remember now are Katharina and Ludwig — the guy she spends the night with. In the beginning of the story, Katharina confesses to murdering a member of the press, and the rest of the book is sort of based around trying to find out why she did that (or how violence develops and where it can lead).

The story moves quickly, and is definitely relevant to our times… The lack of secrecy and the invasive qualities of the press are something that aren’t likely to go away any time soon.

The movie was made in the 70′s and was subbed in English (from German). It was a fair representation of the book, even though they left out the announcement of her murder in the beginning. In my opinion, that changed the tone of the story, and not for the better. As usual, I go with, “The book is better than the movie.”

Either way, I would recommend this novella to everyone — it is short and easy to read, and the narrative style is fun.

The Constant Gardener by John le Carré

For my film and literature class this week, we read The Constant Gardener by John le Carré. The majority of the book happens in places surrounding a British High Commission in Nairobi, with a little bit written in Canada and Germany, as well. There are two main characters (and some minor ones) that the narrative follows at separate times. Sandy Woodrow, an older ‘gentleman’ who works at the High Commission, is the opening main character and Justin, a career diplomat similar to Sandy, is the later main character.

This book is basically a murder-mystery story. Justin’s (attractive!) wife, Tessa, has been murdered and her travelling aid partner, Arnold Bluhm, has gone missing from the scene. Though we find out relatively early on what is going on and at least have an idea why Tessa was killed, Justin must go follow her steps to find out for himself.

I felt this book was hard to get into… I did not like Sandy Woodrow, and also did not especially enjoy his narrative. However, once the narrative started focusing on Justin’s continuance of Tessa’s cause, the book really picked up. Of course, I’ve always been a sucker for documents in books — emails, interviews, notes, etc. It is fun when an author includes things of that nature.

Both main male characters dealt with two side characters — Rob and Lesley, who were interviewers. I really loved these two characters, and am glad they had a part in finding out the ‘mystery.’ They were probably the most ‘pure’ characters besides Justin, who was a bit of a bore until the second half of the novel. I don’t want to spoil the ending… so I will just say that I did not approve of it. It wasn’t how I saw the book ending, or how I saw Justin dealing with the events as his character was progressing.

Although this was not in any way a bad book, I would not have picked it up on my own, nor would I have finished it if it wasn’t required for class. I welcomed Justin’s part of the story, and was quite happy to get away from Sandy, and so I did like the second half of the book. I appreciated the controversy surrounding pharmaceuticals in Africa, but the book felt overly long. Once I had picked up what was going on, I still had to wait for Justin to catch up. Overall, it was a decent read. We will be watching the movie on Monday, so look forward to reading about it!

Hard Eight, To the Nines by Janet Evanovich

In this adventure, Stephanie is once again looking for someone outside of the regular FTAs. Her neighbor/family friend, Mabel, has asked her to find her daughter and granddaughter, who have skipped town on a child custody bond. Evanovich describes this as money put forth by divorced parents, who either chose or were court-ordered, to ensure that they would not kidnap their own child… or something like that.

Unfortunately, Eddie Abruzzi has his own interests in finding Evelyn and Annie (the missing persons) and is determined to scare off Stephanie to do so. She fights …. A new character appears in this book in the form of a very young, nervous lawyer named Albert Kloughn (and that is K-l-o-u-g-h-n, not c-l-o-w-n, which he manages to point out an annoying number of times). He tags along with Stephanie and Lula and generally gets in the way whenever he can. I was not too fond of him.

I absolutely loved the romance between Ranger and Steph in this book. She and Morelli had a bit of a falling out in the previous book, and Ranger sort of takes his place (in a non-boyfriend, much more mysterious way). Of course, Evanovich had to create a Terry Gilman equivalent (I forgot to mention her… she used to date Morelli and is involved with him through the police dept. these days), with Jeanne Ellen Burrows, who the blurb coins, “Rangerette.” She’s better than Stephanie at bounty hunting, and has been linked to Ranger… I’ll just say now that I think she was professional and interesting, but Steph just gets jealous of her past with Ranger.

I really enjoyed Hard Eight. Of course, I love Ranger as a character, but because of his romance and Eddie Abruzzi scaring the crap out of Stephanie the whole book, the laughter was scarce. It felt more apart of a series, where the rest of the books almost had a standalone feel.

In this adventure, Vinnie posted bail on an immigrant, Samuel Singh, granting him three months of legal stay in the United States. With just a couple weeks left on his ticket, Singh goes missing. Vinnie puts both Stephanie and Ranger on the case. Unfortunately, the first lead Stephanie gets winds up dead WHILE talking to her.

She starts receiving red roses, white carnations, disturbing notes, and pictures that put the notes to shame. Ranger and his posse take turns watching her back, and though she manages to keep the car explosion numbers down, she has no problem having Ranger’s ‘Merry Men’ get injured (a lot) while protecting her.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Steph, Lula (who is a better character now), and Connie end up going to Las Vegas to search for Singh. Also, Albert stops being annoying and starts being a lovable guy. Steph’s sister Valerie also is living with their parents with her two kids, so everything is hectic and wild and fun.

I laughed a lot in this book… At one point, Stephanie beats the crap out of some guy who was trying to kill her. After Ranger finds out, of course, all he does is grin and congratulate her. The scene made me laugh for probably a straight minute. Finally, she’s starting to hold her own!

Another part that made me laugh for a while was when Ranger and Stephanie went to pick up an FTA, and he decided to shoot at them. While still standing in the doorway, Ranger ‘instinctively’ pushes Stephanie off the stoop into a bush, and later said he was just concerned for her safety, while really he was just getting back at her for a joke she played on him.

Overall, this book was good, the writing was excellent, and the plot was decent. I really like that Evanovich started working more on her character dynamics. It makes the books feel more a part of a series rather than just mystery novels that happen to have the same names in them.