Things are picking up

Yes dear readers I have returned from the ether. Having gone back to work has kept me hopping all day. However, this new job is not so cumbersome that I can't take a few minutes and catch up on my reading.

So when we last left Mikael Blomqvist and company, things were plodding along. Mr. Blomqvist has since served his sentence for libel thereby paying his debt to society. Imagine that, a country where you can actually go to jail for libel. He has since returned from his "three month uneventful holiday" to investigating the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Simultaneously, our girl Lisbeth is still in the depth of guardianship, having fallen and taken her revenge on a real sleaze bag of a guardian.

Now things are starting to pick up. In combing through the Hedeby newspaper's photographic archives, our hero makes a startling discovery, which confirms his theory. Blomqvist believes that the key to Harriet's disappearance lay in something that was going that day. Lo and behold, he stumbled on to something. In reviewing the images for a Children's Day parade, Blomqvist discovers pictures of Harriet with a frightened look on her face. Aha, the key to our mystery. Just what that thing is has yet to be discovered. Like Christie's Poirot,Blomqvist is meticulously combing through the evidence searching for and finding hidden clues. I'll have to keep reading to find out.

Stay Tuned.

Hip Deep Into the Story

So I'm now hip into the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I must say things are getting interesting. There seems to be a connection to Harriet Vanger's disappearance and one of her uncle's connections to Swedish Nazis. Yes Swedish Nazis did exist and you can google this if you want. What that connection is will hopefully be revealed in the third part. In the meantime we have a parallel development. It would seem that our

girl

Lisbeth has a new guardian to look after her affairs. After all, being so sullen and occasionally prone to bursts of violence, in the cause of defending herself, has rendered her by the state mentally incompetent. Therefore, she must have someone to look manage her life. This new guardian, it would seem, has a sadistic streak which he expressed by raping Lisbeth twice before she exacted a measure of punishment in the form of blackmail. So who's the crazy one now?

In the meantime, our hero, Mikael Blomkvist (soon to be played on the big screen by Daniel Craig making the price of a ticket worth it) has been getting comfortable in exile. He has managed to ingratiate himself among the locals of Hedeby and begin a clandestine affair with Cecila Vanger, the head mistress of the local school. All the while, under the cover of writing Henrik Vanger's biography, Blomkvist has been investigating the mysterious Harriet and slowly assembling the suspects. Like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, he methodically reviews the evidence, examining each piece with exacting detail. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

A bit of a side note. Stieg Larsson seemed to be a bit obsessed with consumerism because of blatant use of product placement. It would seem that every chapter or two has a reference to an electronic product (Apple), a grocery chain (Konsum), or some other product. Just a thought.

Stay Tuned,
Lenore