"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" sounds more like a kung-fu movie than a Swedish thriller. 
 But a Swedish thriller it is. And while posthumous debuts rarely get the attention they deserve -- or any attention, really -- the first novel of the late Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium trilogy starts slow, and slowly winds itself up into a tight knot of unique mystery and thriller elements. Just give it a few chapters to unfold. 
 Take-no-prisoners journalist Mikael Blomkvist has just lost his reputation, his savings and his freedom (hello, jail sentence!) after a nasty libel suit from an executive named Wennerstrom. Then he's unexpectedly contacted by aged industrialist Henrik Vanger, to discover what happened to the guy's grandniece. She vanished forty years ago from the family's isolated island, and her body -- alive or dead -- was never found. 
 It's a pretty cold case, and not a very inviting one. But when Vanger offers Mikael rewards he cannot refuse -- evidence on the villainous Wennerstrom -- he finds himself facing the bizarre, sinister Vanger family with few leads to go on. Then he meets Lisbeth Salander, an eccentric, abused computer hacker who serves as his counterpoint. And as Mikael unearths the clues to Harriet's disappearance, he also finds some skeletons long kept buried. 
 Posthumous debuts are a rarity -- publishers always want a series, sequels, publicity signings, and books headed by "By the Author Of..." You don't get any of that if the person is dead. So it's a sign of how amazing "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is that Larsson's uniquely mystery-thriller has received such attention across the world. 
 And Larsson's book is a unique blend of old and new -- he takes the Agatha Christie aesthetic of a locked-room murder with a dozen suspects, and enfolds it in a ruthless look at modern Swedish society and the study of sexual aggression. It's a dark, dangerous, unfair world where the truth is quashed and women are treated horribly -- whether it's the missing Harriet or the eccentric, angry "girl with the dragon tattoo." 
 And though his prose is rather bleak and often quite gritty, a certain brand of understated passion shines through Larsson's thriller story. It's the kind that feels the need to express itself even though it takes place in fiction. The only problem with the book is that Larsson pays undue attention to the whole Mikael-against-the-exec story. Not interesting, compared to the mystery. 
 But Mikael and Salander make an intriguing odd couple -- he's so world-weary and demoralized that he seems to care about nothing, while Salander is a mass of hurts and quirks. While she sometimes seems cartoonish, she's also a vibrant little character with enough strength and power to lash back at attackers. The supporting characters are far darker fare, including a loopy Nazi weirdo. 
 Take the works of Agatha Christie and smother them in a disillusioned, morally-bankrupt noir world -- and you'll have something like "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." A hard read, but leaves you wondering what the next two books have in store.