It took me a while to get into this book. I didn't really get hooked until almost three hundred pages in, but the book was well over 500 pages so there was plenty of story to go. 
 Stieg Larsson does a good job with character development, his descriptions are thorough, sometimes a little too thorough. Some parts were so overly bogged down in detail I had to fight not to stop reading, other parts were so interesting I had to force myself to close the book so I could get some sleep. 
 A lot of the stuff in this book is just plain sick. Yes, I know it's all part of the story, but unless you don't mind reading about torture,rape, child abuse, brutal murder and a lot of sex, I wouldn't read it. Just to give an example, there's a preview of the next book at the end of this one, and the prologue deals with a 13 year old girl harnassed and tied to a bed for over a month. 
 I had to wonder if the main male character in the book wasn't Steig Larsson's alter ego because he had women throwing themselves at him right and left. Three women in one book, one married to another man, another a blond debutant, and the third a girl young enough to be his daughter. The man never said no, he was a male slut. Well, granted, he was a man--but he didn't even have to chase these women, they usually did one of the following things: (1)Climb on his lap and start kissing him senseless. (2) Begin taking their clothes off at some unexpected time. (3) Say, "I want to have casual meaningless sex with you, or (4) Climb naked into bed with him out of the blue. Do I even have to point out how unrealistic the above scenarios are? These women behaved more like men than women. There were a couple of scenes which were supposed to be serious, where the woman threw herself at the man, and I found myself unable to stop laughing. Yes, I know it wasn't supposed to be funny. But it was, oh, yes-- it was. 
 Thank you Stieg Larsson.