Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Have people gone mad? It's gotten to the point where I think that I have been transported to another planet. Seriously, what in the hell is matter with people? Two books that I believed had serious, structural flaws have surfaced on a number of Best of 2011 lists, and I just finished the blockbuster best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I hadn't exactly been avoiding this book, but the hype turned me off (shades of Da Vinci Code), so I didn't really leap to purchase a copy. I kinda hoped my mother might read it and then lend it to me. Which didn't happen. Then I saw the movie trailer and I admittedly have a serious jones for Daniel Craig, and although I abhor screen violence toward women (I walked out on Silence of the Lambs three times), I thought, hmmm, the Craig factor might too overpowering to shun the movie. I decided to read the book so that I would have a sense of the plot in case I had to walk out at some point.

This book, despite all its hype and mega-sales is mediocre at best. At. Best.

First of all, although I write fiction, I would never presume that just because I have a proven facility with words, I could present myself as a journalist. It's a little like being a damn fine piano player and then thinking you can play the harp because they both have strings. Larsson's journalistic background undermines the first third of this book. Info dump after info dump after info dump pile on top of each other. Beyond some amusing lines every now and then, the dialogue is interchangeable. All the characters sound the same. The dialogue isn't relieved by any descriptive back story or physical tells. And, in fact, the back story in this novel is handled with a heavy-handed pen. Even worse, the main premise for the protagonist's taking off for the hinterlands of Sweden seems, well, manufactured beyond belief. If he's such a marvelous journalist, why are he and his partner (also, we're told, an amazingly competent journalist) so naive and trapped so easily. I mean, wouldn't you think after twenty years in the business they might check out the veracity of their source so that they wouldn't be the subject of a libel suit?

So, for me the book begins with an implausible premise, especially when the reader is regaled with exactly how good a journalist he is. In fact, he's portrayed as one of the one few moral voices left in financial journalism in Sweden. Except apparently he isn't. The reader is left with the impression that he's either incompetent or immoral. Anyway, it's a device to transport him to a remote location in Sweden to solve a locked room mystery, except this is its sister story, the remote island mystery. The mystery finally begins to reveal itself, which is interspersed with snippets of Salander's story. I have little to say about the mystery because if you've read as many mysteries as I have, then you most likely know the ending by Chapter Four. This book was no exception. Once I got the basic background, I had "solved" the mystery, even if I didn't know how it was done; this is why characterization in these books is key.

Which hello, just not there. Protagonist is a cliche character, the typical extremely attractive man with lots of smarts and a decent heart. His interactions with women are cliche. Even his interactions with Salander are cliche. How refreshing it would have been had these two not become lovers. She is the only character in the book who is not weighed down in cliche, and then damn it to hell, she turns cliche at the end as well.

So what do we have so far? Clumsily interjected back story, paragraph after paragraph of info dumps, pedestrian dialogue, and a majority of characterizations little more than recycled tropes. Let's list another major fail. Setting the majority of the book in a unique location begs for a tremendous sense of place, something that is a cornerstone of what I expect in most successful mysteries. Nope. We strike out on this front as well. I kept hoping that there would be a map at some point because I had such a hard time imagining where these houses were relative to the bridge. Other than being told it was cold (and this is the most glaring weakness of this book, we are told everything), I have only the sketchiest idea of what comprises this island's topography (other than one hill), it's flora (some trees and shrubs), and it's unique identity relative to this story. Other than it being an island and essentially the Vanger compound, it doesn't play into the novel at all. You might say, well, that should be enough. No. It's not. I suggest you read Martin Cruz Smith's Havana. I was sweating while I was reading that book because the descriptions of Cuba and the heat and the unrelenting humidity was such a part of the story. That book couldn't have occurred anywhere else. This book? I really didn't feel it was particularly Swedish, frankly.

Essentially, this book was a lot of soapbox wrapped up in a mystery. It was about exposing the level of violence toward women (as this is not unique to Sweden, it didn't strike me as particularly a reflection of Swedish society so much as a general issue in modern society). It was about exposing the level of support for Hitler by Swedish Nazis in World War II. It was about exposing the failures of the Swedish state to protect its wards. It was briefly about hackers and their world. It was not a successful novel. I struggled to get through the first third--questionable initial premise for the protagonist's trajectory; all this blather about the security agency that had no point--at which point the sexual abuse of Salander occurs, which is such a cheap, cheap shot for getting us into the novel, but I have to admit it worked.

And I felt that way throughout the novel. It was like the trifecta of cheap shots. Rape scene, bring out the Nazis, and how can we possibly forget the tried-and-true serial killer. Yahtzee! I know it's not fair, but I have just finished re-reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by le Carre where you have the most perfect blend of characterizations, back story, and plot. Which was a best seller in its own right. This is how far we have fallen. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is this decade's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Please.

Fads, Let Me List Them

I generally listen to the news as I grin-and-bear (more bearing than grinning) my daily commute, however, one morning I was so out of it I just left it on the rock&roll station that is my husband's choice of ear food, and I noticed something about current music. I should place this in some context. The rock&roll station he listens to has an eclectic mix of current offerings, classic rock, and some blues thrown in to show how cool they are. Although owned by a huge media conglomerate, it has wisely realized that pre-programmed shows in this market won't work, and it seems that the DJs actually have some choice in what is played. So the other day I'm listening to a Beatles song and the next song up is something "today-ish," which is a nice way of saying I don't know who in the hell is singing.

What struck me throughout my entire drive is that current music and current style of writings are dove-tailing each other. Wildly popular music (and I even include Adele in this although I do adore her voice) is essentially notenotenotenote, different two notes, notenotenotenotenote. I assume this is due to the influence of rap, but there is virtually NO melody. However, this lack of melody is always compensated for by a kick-ass percussion background. I don't know enough about rap to make any sort of intelligent statement about it other than to me, personally, it's more spoken word, with a kick-ass beat to it.

Books these days are more or less the same. Little characterization for the main protags (or in some cases NO characterization--where's the "melody"), however, we do have kick-ass world-building (essentially the percussion of the novel), and the minor characters seem more thought out than the main characters. To me a book doesn't move forward unless the main protagonist is somehow affected by what happens in the book. All the world-building in the world can't save a book for me unless the main character moves.

This is why writing a mystery series is, inherently, limiting. Because aside from solving mysteries, your main protagonist needs to move emotionally, and how many personal epiphanies can one character have? I think you can have five books of epiphanies, and after that you either stop the series or the book becomes basically a soap opera with a mystery included. The mystery in a novel fulfills the same role as world building does in the fantasy novel. It is key, but it's not *key*, if you get my drift.

Fantasy novels are easy to pick on because world building is so integral to their structure, and even as I wade through popular reviews of such books, many of their readers *only* care about the world-building, so maybe the authors are writing to their readers; I don't know. I think a lot of mystery readers really only care about plot. The classic mystery's roots are embedded in Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, who never age and never change. Not that I haven't torn through the entire Christie oeuvre; I have. But in general, such one note protagonists don't work for me. A number of books I've read recently just don't *go* anywhere. Oh, physically they do, as in lots happens, and I can't say they aren't well written, because a lot of them are, but the main character stands still while everything happens around them. It's not a personal journey, which, at heart, I think every book needs to have at its core.

Or if it doesn't, then it's a comment on the character's existential crisis (and I don't usually throw those sorts of terms around because, well, how pretentious, but here I really do mean this). Two writers who pull this off are Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Frankly, most of the books I've read who have a moribund protagonist are *not* using this character as emblematic of modern existential angst, they are just being lazy, but indeed the whole point of Chandler and Hammett's novels *is* the existential centerlessness of Marlowe and Spade. So, yes, it can be done and done beautifully, but it must be part of the whole concept, not because, wow, the world building/plot so shiny, ultimately so hollow.

Time to re-read The Long Goodbye.

M is for Mystery Joins the Ranks

M is for Mystery--the independent mystery bookstore that has been a bastion for readers and writers of mysteries for over a decade--began its fire sale last week. It now joins the ranks of those small independent bookstores that have closed their doors. This time around it doesn't seem to be a financial blow to the solar plexus as a result of the e-revolution or the discount revolution. Ed Kaufman is retiring. He sent out smoke signals about six months ago that he was ready to hang it up and did anyone want to buy the store. Would that I had that chunk of change. Talk about a dream come true. Sadly, I've got one kidlet still in college and another heading out for college next year and all extra cash (and then some!) is being funneled into tuition dollars. As no one in the mystery community stepped up to the plate, finally he sold the store to someone who is going the used book, antiquarian route.

It was telling that at the joint MWA/SINC Holiday party at the store yesterday the new owner didn't even step up to the mike to say hello to the local mystery community. I knew at least half of the people in the room; most of them were local writers. That the new owner didn't even feel compelled to say hello to us said to me that we won't have a role in his vision for the new store. Well, that's his right, and I'm not trashing him for that. It's just, well, sad. And it's chilling for people like me: writers with a limited market whose limited market happens to be mystery aficionados. The elimination of yet another mystery bookstore (Kate's in Massachusetts--another venerable institution for mystery readers and writers--closed last year) is another lost opportunity for marketing in a market that is shrinking as I type.

And as much I think that the e-revolution is here to stay, I will say unequivocally that browsing the shelves of a bookstore is not the same as browsing the net. Ed was having a 50% off sale, and, um, I went a little wild. I bought a ton of books that I'd actually seen ballyhooed on amazon but wasn't wowed by, but in the store reading a page here, a page there, I was hooked. I bought eight books. Granted, they were 50% off, but even if they had been 50% off on amazon, I STILL wouldn't have bought them. They didn't jump out at me. On a bookshelf, their covers were much brighter and shinier, and I could thumb through the book at random (not read an excerpt that is chosen for me).

That is the big difference here. I like the physical feel of a book, but I also love the ease of picking up an e-reader. Both have pluses as reads. But in terms of sales, I tend to buy lots in stores and when I purchase books online for my Kobo, I buy ONE book. Because browsing the compiled lists touted by amazon or Barnes and Noble is limited. It's always the books from the big publishers that are being pushed, never the small book that could delight. Sometimes you want the blockbuster and sometimes, damn it, you want to be delighted.

Anyway, this is yet another sad footnote in how the world of reading is changing. Thank you, Ed. As a reader I appreciate the love and dedication you put into your store, and as a writer? Ditto.

That OTHER Blog

Where I talk a little bit about new novel's structure: www.penandprejudice.com.

Book Review: Blue Nights

I should preface this review by saying that I adore Joan Didion's writing. There really is no one better at cataloguing the social chaos and energy that defines a specific shot of history than her. I grew up in the California of the 1960s and 1970s, and if anyone asks me about those years, I point to her. Like most of her readers, I read with such sadness about the death of her husband and daughter, and finished her book The Year of Magical Thinking with such profound respect; she defined unfathomable grief with words.

Blue Nights—her ode to her daughter, Quintana—is also a well-written book, but when I finished it, I slapped it down on my dining room table with a rare sense of irritation. With most books there is you, the reader, who is, hopefully, at the mercy of the author. The author pulls you into their world. Generally, you don't pull them into yours. When that happens, a book sort of fails. I didn't get pulled into Joan Didion's world. As a parent, I couldn't help but pull her into mine, and the parent in me was snorting in disbelief and sometimes outrage. There is an underlying question throughout the whole book: was she a good enough parent? I can't really answer that question. It's a question that all parents ask themselves frequently, although usually not hand-in-hand with mourning a child's death (and, yes, this is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, bar none). But it's hard not to stare in disbelief when she comments that her daughter was terrified that her father would go first because then Quintana would be under the care and responsibility of her mother. Why wouldn't she be terrified? This is the same woman who felt it was perfectly acceptable to bring her infant to a reporting assignment covering the fall of Saigon. Who thought it appropriate in response to this assignment to go out and buy a bunch of designer clothes. And while this disconnect with reality is a trademark of hers, it might work for her persona as a writer, it fails when we consider her as a parent. As a writer, we might find it privately amusing that she would fly from Honolulu and arrive in Hartford when it was below zero without a sweater. When it’s her kid shivering, then it’s impossible to not judge her. The reader takes a back-seat to the parent.

Didion's detachment has always been her strength. But it's an odd detachment, which is why I think it works so well in her writing. Because it's the detachment of the walking wounded. Someone so battered by reality that detachment is the only way to survive. It's the detachment of someone trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. As a parent (and please don't assume that I think I'm a fantastic parent--merely adequate), I'm listening to her questioning her efficacy as a parent, and I feel like shouting, honey, it's not about you. That's what parenting is. It's not about you. Which seems manifestly unfair because her writing has always been about her and not about her. But you can't carry that sensibility into parenting. I read over these verbal snapshots of her life and marriage, and all I can think of was that Quintana never got to be a child. She’s described as being precocious in this book, but to me it feels like more of a coping mechanism. They may have loved her unquestionably, but the Dunnes went on location, stayed in swanky hotels, wrote their articles, movie scripts, and books, and dragged her along for the ride. She had to become an adult in a child’s body.

So much for the personal issues I had with this book. We come to the writing. The last third of the book is devoted to Didion’s sense that she is losing her ability to write. It's part and parcel of other physical frailties, but although the physical maladies are terrifying, they pale in contrast to the idea that she's losing her truly wonderful way of parsing words. That her style is becoming trite, that an ability to write so clearly about the lack of center is now suffering from not having its own center.
And while I can't say that her writing falls short (the beginning of this book is as masterful a beginning as I've ever read), there is a sense of, um, where's the editor? Her repetition of phrases and concepts that in previous works united a bunch of seemingly disparate events to create a fractured whole, now does seem something of a tic.

Another stylistic choice that seemed to dominate this book was, for want of a better word, product placement. And by that I mean it is never a pair of shoes, a hotel, a sweater; it's Laboutins, the Dorchester, cashmere. Truly, are we supposed to lament that Bendel's is no longer the same? Even people are nothing more than product placement. This actress, this director gave a speech at Quintana's wedding.

Part of the strength of Didion's work written in the 1960s and the 1970s is that the protagonists of her essays were no different than you or I, except that maybe they were part of Manson's family. And although that is a hell of a difference, in her hands it was also not a hell of a difference. A "there but for the grace of God" sensibility dominated. In her current work everyone has a name. A big name. Almost like these larger than life people had no right to up and die. Unlike you and me. Because we don't have names. It's unsettling at first and then becomes annoying. It undercuts the real issue in this book. The loss of her daughter. Does it really matter that she went to school with and had dinner at this restaurant with this Hollywood icon? It doesn't make her passing any more tragic, although there is the hint that she was special because of it. When in reality, she was special because she was so loved.

In the end I certainly would recommend this book because Joan Didion is one of the most thoughtful and fantastic writers of her generation, but Blue Nights doesn't have the strength of The Year of Magical Thinking. I think this is the most personal of her books (for obvious reasons), but it's also one of her weaker books, perhaps the inevitable fall out of the detached finally becoming attached with little to attach to.

Guest Blogger Ann Parker

Dear Readers:  You're in for a real treat today. I'm part of a blog tour for Ann Parker, whose writing I adore. Seriously, there are people like me who can, on occasion, write, and there are people who are artists with words. Ann is one of these writers. I've had the privilege and joy to watch her write her way through three books, and here now is a spotlight on number four. If you like mysteries and you love historicals, Ann Parker is the writer for you.

Eat Well and Thrive… or Not – by Ann Parker

Firstly, I want to thank Claire Johnson for the chance to guest post on Roux Morgue as part of my virtual tour for MERCURY’S RISE, the fourth in my Silver Rush historical mystery series.

Since I write mysteries, people die and my sleuth, Leadville saloon-owner Inez Stannert, must ferret out the criminal and the crime. This latest book in my series takes Inez to Manitou Springs, a fast-rising health resort and tourist destination, where there was a whole lotta dying going on, not all of it (or even most of it) of a nefarious nature.

In 1880, during the time the book takes place, Manitou was famous for its mineral waters. It also had a mild climate, wide open spaces, and beautiful scenery. It had some very high-class (for the West, anyway) hotels, and it had many many physicians. The reason being that Manitou was a “destination resort” for many from the East Coast and Europe who suffered from a variety of ailments, particularly tuberculosis.

The cause of tuberculosis, or consumption as it was popularly called, was still unknown in 1880. Robert Koch, the physician who would discover the bacteria that causes the disease, was still conducting his research in Germany. Even though no one knew for certain what caused this dreaded disease, that didn’t stop physicians from developing their own theories and regimens for “curing” or at least slowing its progress.

Diet, in particular, was seen as an important element in controlling TB. However, some of those diets are pretty alarming by today’s standards: if the tuberculosis didn’t kill you, it seemed that your plugged arteries probably would. For instance, a Fannie Farmer cookbook from 1904 (long after Koch’s discovery), advises a dining schedule that a Hobbit would appreciate: besides breakfast, dinner, and supper, “there should be a luncheon in the morning, another in the afternoon, and still another before retiring.” Fats, in the form of cream, butter, olive oil, bacon, and beef fat were part of the recommended diet. And eggs. Lots of eggs. Preferably raw. Some doctors advised 18 eggs a day. Milk and beef were also staples of the consumptive’s diet (and we’re talking full-fat milk here, cream and all).

Still, eggs, cream, and beef fat would have been far preferable to the “slaughterhouse cure,” that became popular among consumptives in Denver in 1879. This particular cure involved drinking the blood of freshly slaughtered oxen and cows. And if we’re to segue into talking other comestibles taken to forestall the march of tuberculosis, I should mention the patent medicines and nostrums peddled to a desperate public, who lived in fear of the “white plague.” These so-called medicines and tonics contained ingredients such as cod-liver oil, lime, arsenic, chloroform, turpentine, kerosene, the ever-present alcohol, and yes, mercury.

We can all shake our heads in dismay and wonder what people were thinking of back then, to turn to some of these diets and remedies. But we have the virtue of hindsight. What will folks a couple generations from now think of our efforts to tame diseases such as cancer with diet? It would be interesting to know…

-----------BIO-----------

Ann Parker is a California-based science/corporate writer by day and an historical mystery writer by night. Her award-winning Silver Rush series, featuring saloon-owner Inez Stannert, is set in 1880s Colorado, primarily in the silver-mining boomtown of Leadville. The latest in her series, MERCURY’S RISE, was released November 1. Publishers Weekly says, “Parker smoothly mixes the personal dramas and the detection in an installment that’s an easy jumping-on point for newcomers.” Library Journal adds, “Parker’s depth of knowledge coupled with an all-too-human cast leaves us eager to see what Inez will do next. Encore!” Learn more about Ann and her books at http://www.annparker.net

MERCURY’S RISE and the other Silver Rush mysteries are available from independent booksellers, amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble.

Leave a comment on this post to be eligible to win a Silver Rush mystery prize! Winner will be announced later this week. To see the rest of Ann’s virtual tour, check out her Appearances page on her website.

A Farewell

I took down the rant I put up yesterday because it doesn't serve any purpose other than to paint me as a crank with a grudge. Not that I don't feel strongly about these things, but...enough.

Anyway, on to not necessarily lighter but certainly more important matters. We finally had a wee little send off for my uncle today. He died a few months ago, but my aunt was quite sick herself and it's taken this long for her to bounce back. She and my uncle were good friends with Jessica Mitford, so a funeral was not in the picture! We just had a get together at my cousin's house, with boxes of See's candy (my uncle had something of a sweet tooth) on every surface. I made a cake, and I got to hug a lot of people I don't see that often; people who knew me and my sister as small children and now we're in our fifties. My uncle loved a good party, even better was a party with his family around him. He would have approved. Cheers, Uncle Fred.