Larsson is almost as good as they say he is.

So far, I’ve only read “The Girl with the Dragon Tat­too” by Stieg Larsson so am not fully qual­i­fied to pon­ti­fic­ate, but this Swedish thriller is bril­liantly plot­ted, the char­ac­ters sat­is­fy­ingly bizarre, though not one-dimensional, and the detail con­vin­cing.  A very slight acquaint­ance with Sweden is suf­fi­cient to be able to visu­al­ize the type of loc­a­tion.  The main female char­ac­ter, Salander, has Bond-like, super­hu­man powers, which are not totally explained (or not yet) and the author does seem to have an unhealthy fas­cin­a­tion with sad­istic sex (though to oppose it for its viol­ence towards vul­ner­able women).   And thor­oughly 21^st cen­tury in the use and abuse of IT to both com­mit and solve crimes.