This book has often been reviewed as very dark with explicit rape/torture scenes, poorly translated, jumpy narrative, etc.I didn't find any of that to be true. Ok wait, the rape scenes were fairly explicit... but certainly not any worse than your fairly standard fare found in crime fiction published by several bestselling American authors (Coban, Patterson, Cornwell come to mind) or the details discussed and discovered in popular television programs like NCIS, Bones, and the various CSI series.
My feeling is that many of the reviews that I read (on LibraryThing and Amazon) suffer from a bit of prejudice... that a Swedish author could write such a good story with such compelling characters. While I didn't end up liking the main protagonist, Mikeal Blomkvist, very much at the end of the book... the girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, was dynamite! I'll read the next two books just to find out more about her.
Lastly... the author, described as a radical, Nazi-hunting journalist with communist ties, died in 2004 at the relatively young age of 50. While the circumstances aren't terrifically suspicous (massive heart attack).. it does leave the door open for conspiracy enthusiasts, and has almost certainly contributed to the popularity of these books.
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