The story is highly suspenseful , sometimes complicated , and occasionally gruesome and disgusting
How is story?
The late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's brilliant THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was originally titled the equivalent of "Men Who Hate Women," and if the Swedish version was more prosaic, it better captured the overall theme of this superb mystery novel.  The story is highly suspenseful, sometimes complicated, and occasionally gruesome and disgusting.  In short, the author succeeded in creating an entertaining and intelligent novel that is also very, very blunt in its revulsion of misogyny.There are three threads to this first novel in Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.  The first two threads, which become tightly woven together but which never become a single strand, center on the two main characters, the star financial investigative journalist, Mikhael Blomkvist, and the brilliant if anti-social hacker and private investigator, Lisbeth Salander.  The Blomkvist thread, which, to mix a metaphor, serves as bookends to the novel, concerns Blomkvist's attempts to expose a corrupt industrialist named Hans-Erik Wennerstr&ouml;m.  The Salander thread stitches together the recurring misogyny motif: unjustly declared insane as a child, Salander had lived in a psychiatric asylum until released as an adult under the legal supervision of a court-appointed guardian.  After her first, benign guardian passes away from a stroke, Salander is assigned to Nils Bjurman, a socially respectable but privately sadistic man who rapes her.  What guides her subsequent actions--and this is another repeating theme in the novel--is something that was taught to her by her first guardian, "that every action has its consequences."  The third thread, which makes up the greater part of the material of the novel, is a stunningly well executed murder mystery concerning a prominent family headed by the industrialist Henrik Vanger.To tackle misogyny, Larsson creates in Salander a kind of super-hero.  Most of the principal players in this story are realistically depicted (well, there's the matter of at-the-drop-of-a-hat sex, which we'll get to in a moment).  The character of Blomkvist, for instance, who might well be the journalist author's alter ego, is completely believable--he is naturally drawn.  You want to believe in Salander, too, but you do so like you want to believe in Superman: someone you can trust will bust the bad guys.  Salander knows how to hurt bad men so they don't hurt back.  But as fascinating as she is--her tattoos, piercings, and other emblems of an independent spirit endear you to her--she's almost too good to be true.  Salander's not invincible--she has her own Kryptonite vulnerabilities--but she's hyper-real.  It's to Larsson's credit that the reader buys into her all the same.Perhaps not surprising is that sex plays a prominent role in a book with a misogyny theme.  But it's not all or even predominantly in the context of violence against women.  Neither is it ever in the context of traditional relationships.  Both Blomkvist and Salander engage in numerous trysts, with each other and with others, but always with friends and acquaintances not with committed lovers, per se.  The sex doesn't seem particularly joyful.  What are these frequent sexual episodes?  Do they simply reflect Larsson's version of the world, or do they convey a deeper meaning?  Is it that the world is so painful or mortality so depressing that sex serves as a drug to forget the mundane?  It's not clear.  But with the contrast of sex in different contexts in this novel the question seems to hang in the air.THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a terrific novel.  The fact that it is currently a very popular book (the cover has been ubiquitous in Christmas advertisements) just goes to show that sometimes the public gets it right.  Assuming, of course, that people are reading it.(The audio book version works very well.  Simon Vance does a fine job narrating the story.  His vocalizations of the many Swedish characters are uneven; Dragan Armansky, Salander's boss at Milton Security, for instance, sounds like Count Dracula.  Actually, more like Count Chocula.  Anyway, you get my drift.  For most of the other Swedes Vance assumes various versions of a British or "European" English accent.  It's not too distracting, though.  Vance's craftsmanship overall is solid.) 