The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Lending library find. I can see why this was so popular. I liked Larsson's pacing, and the intertwining of large-scale financial crimes, when government oversteps the bounds of people's rights and dignity in the name of helping them (Salander's situation is an absolute mockery of the idea of guardianship that I think is closer to real life than many people might realize), and the more run-of-the-mill (at least for the genre) psychopathic sexual sadism. I went back and forth as to whether the detail of the sadism was gratuitous or not, and perhaps this is a weird and/or counterintuitive place for me to be, but it didn't bother me. I think that's in part because I'm getting an extra onslaught of vicarious trauma at work right now, and it has been an unfortunate reminder that truth is stranger than fiction: in this case, I mean more horrifying. What actually irritated me about this book is the “good guy” male protagonist, when I think Lisbeth Salander is the real hero. Which is sort of how Larsson wrote her, but also sort of not? I have no idea if a female and/or queer author would have done it differently, or if Larsson's treatment of her was lost in translation, but the most annoying part of Lisbeth's character is her bisexuality feels like a plot device to convey liberalism that to me just felt more like queerbaiting, written at a time I think before people had that word to call it out as such. Anyone who follows me on goodreads knows sometimes I return to series I didn't like somewhat inexplicably, so I won't say I won't read the others, but now am not feeling interested in doing so.