The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Over the past year I've started to read a lot more crime and mystery stories, and in doing so, you tend to get a certain feel for the conventions of the genre. Not to say that all the stories I've been reading in that area are the same, or even derivative of each other, but there's a general feel to them

One of the unsettling things about this story is how clinical it can be at times. that you start to notice. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo violates those conventions completely in a way that , and in doing so leaves you unsure of exactly what the book is until it's nearly over.
A girl goes missing, under circumstances that are either baffling, or suggest murder. But no body is found, and decades later a disgraced reporter is hired to investigate the believed crime and see if he can implicate any of the girl's faamilyh members in the crime.

All three of the main characters (Blomkvist, Lisbeth, and Vanger) are all ultimately seeking the same thing - they want to be free of their pasts, and they paradoxically do so by digging in to the life of someone who had their freedom taken away from them; unfortunately, they become so focused on this that they ignore the other problems that they're digging up until it's almost too late.

One of the things I found unsettling about this story was how clinical the writing was at times - this cold could be an artefact of the Swedish to English translation, the author's past as a journalist, or just because the story's dealing with a crime that's nearly forty years gone by the time the action opens; regardless, it draws you away from caring too much about the characters, and more about the mystery. When you realize this is happening, though, you realize you're being put in the same sort of objectifying frame of mind that the villians of the piece are using. It's a very clever effect.

I'd recommend this one even to people who aren't fans of mystery novels, although your level of enjoyment is likely going to be affected by how familiar you are with the genre.