'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: A Novel' by Stieg Larsson

STIEG LARSSON'S debut crime novel, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," leaves you wanting more from an odd investigative duo. The good news is that this is the first of his "Millennium" trilogy -- there are two more completed books to come -- but there's also bad news: Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004 at 50 before the mysteries were published, a premature end to a budding talent.

There is a lot of buzz in Europe about these books, as there is about a whole slew of Scandinavian thrillers, and Larsson's rising reputation has preceded U.S. publication of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." So much so that when I sat down to read at Pete's in Larchmont Village, a young man at the next table said, "We're reading the same book." He held up another advance copy and said he worked at Paramount, which is considering the book for a movie.

Then, later, the tattooed receptionist at my hair salon pointed to my coffee-stained copy and said that she too had heard it was good, though she couldn't recall where she'd heard that.

In any case, I was excited to tuck into the Nordic novel and was surprisingly disappointed by the first few chapters: They are dense with character and plot development, financial reporting mixed with umlaut-heavy names of people and places I didn't know. Hardly an attention-grabber, I thought, and almost inexcusable in the whodunit genre.

The mystery unfolds, and the book takes off, in the fourth chapter: From there, it becomes classic parlor crime fiction with many modern twists. Mikael Blomkvist is a financial reporter and part owner of Millennium magazine, which has just lost a libel case to a powerful business tycoon, Hans-Erik Wennerström. The journalist's reputation is damaged, along with the magazine's, and he is facing several months in prison when he gets a telephone call from a lawyer representing another industrialist, Henrik Vanger.

Vanger, who lives on a northern island, wants Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his great-niece Harriet, which happened 40 years before. The 16-year-old vanished at a time when access to the island was cut off by a traffic accident on the bridge to the mainland. The girl was the apple of his eye, and Vanger believes she was murdered by another member of the family, perhaps as a means to do him in. Vanger and a police detective have spent decades trying unsuccessfully to solve the mystery. In his 80s now, Vanger is determined to try one last time with the journalist. Blomkvist is reluctant to take on an obviously thankless job, but besides generous financial rewards that, if he stays on the case for a year, could save the magazine, Vanger also offers him a chance at redemption -- evidence to take down Wennerström.