The Girl...
Mrs RWN pressured me into reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium series -- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo etc. I'm really not one for thrillers, they bore me rigid but she was insistent and several friends had recommended them so I finally gave in a few weeks ago.

I read ...Dragon Tattoo in a week or so over the Christmas hols. Yep it ticked along OK, but by the end I'd still not worked out how it was in any way different from any other example of the genre. What, the lead character is a skinny 'hacker' chick and the author likes to name-drop famous brands? That's it?

Anyway I pushed on with the second -- ...Played With Fire -- but last night I reached my limit. In two chapters the author managed to cram in so many 'coincidences' that I couldn't put up with it any more. First he tells us that neither the lead male character nor the lead female character ever goes to a bar -- but then they do, on the same night...and the same bar. Along with the guy who's plotting to kill the girl, to have a meeting with the guy he's going to ask to kill her.

Not long after that, the male lead, who never goes to parties...er...goes to a party -- and then on the way home walks past the female lead's front door at just the right time to witness the attempted murder.

So either Stockholm only has one street, one bar and a population of about two dozen people, or the author has (sorry, had) a pitifully limited stock of plot devices upon which to draw.

Anyway, I give up. It's not often I'll ditch a book before finishing it but life is too short to waste on this drivel -- there are plenty of genuinely good books out there I could be getting into.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:46, 2 replies)

For those who can't finish the series, here's a summary:
Book 1: [nothing happens],[nothing happens],[needless detail about food/some laughably dated tech/small dose of sex, possibly non-consensual or lesbian],[nothing happens],[nothing happens],[something exciting happens],[end]
Book 2: [see above]
Book 3: [see above]

Oddly enjoyable, nonetheless, which is puzzling in the extreme.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:55, closed)

^this^
I can think of countless crime and thriller novels that out class those three books.

That said it was a good read and at least made those kind of crime thriller a bit more popular.

If you like that genre books by the author Jo Nesbo are worth a gander.
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Sat 7 Jan 2012, 1:12, closed)