The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo / Stieg Larsson / 793 pages / First Book in a Series

The beginning is bit slow, but if you keep with it, the rewards are plentiful.  The characters are unlikely and their interactions at times unbelievable, yet the reader is compelled to turn the page.  Mikael Blomkvist publishes a small Swedish political magazine, Millennium, loses a libel case,  is sentenced to three months in prison, and is ordered to pay hefty damages.  He is offered a research job by a Swedish captain of industry, Henrik Vanger, to research and write a family history and to discover what happened to his niece, Harriet.  The offer will enable Blomkvist to keep his magazine afloat.  He takes the job which turns out to be much bigger than he thought.  He could not have succeeded without assistance from the girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth Salander.  The unexpected plot twists and rapid fire ending more than compensate for the slow beginning.