One title on the list:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg KeelandRead about all five titles on Corrigan's list.
For the past decade or so, Sweden has been a popular pick for crime capital of the literary world, thanks to Henning Mankell and his fellow practitioners of noir on ice. The newest name in mystery to emerge out of the frozen north is that of the late journalist-turned-novelist Stieg Larsson. His debut novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was a blockbuster when it was debuted in Europe; this past fall, an English-language version was published in the United States. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a super-smart amalgam of the corporate corruption tale, the legal thriller, the Agatha Christie-type "locked room" puzzle, and the dysfunctional family suspense story. Reporter Mikael Blomkvist is hired by an elderly mogul to solve the "cold case" disappearance of his niece, 40 years ago, from the family compound.
Blomkvist is aided in his investigation by a 24-year-old computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander. Salander is a pierced and tattooed Goth with major attitude problems. She's also one of the most invigorating women to come along in detective fiction since Miss Marple.
--Marshal Zeringue
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