(Spoiler alert: I will give away plot points.)Whilst in Ontario, I finished the novel I had brought, and the only one in the Canadians' house in which I had any interest was East of Eden. But I was on vacation. So, I walked three feet into the nearest bookstore and got a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The books don't strike me as particularly well-written, although I'm reluctant to criticize the style of a work translated from Swedish into British English (British English, by definition, being of criticizable style). The books are very, very long, largely because they feature a Grisham-like obsession for the unnecessary detail. For example, every time anyone eats the menu is described in detail, but the two months spent by the male protaganist in prison get only a few pages. Nonetheless, the plots and characters are interesting, so I'm a couple hundred pages into the sequel during the present vacation.
Particularly of interest to me, and unmentioned by any review which I've thus far encountered, is just how astonishingly post-Christian Sweden has become. A notation for Bible verses is a major plot point in the first book, and it's one I can't imagine any Christian anywhere using (but then, I've never been Swedish). A senile Lutheran pastor recalls the formation of the canon, although he can't remember to whom he's talking. A Presbyterian congregation in Texas identifies its mission as "helping people grow closer to God through the sacrament of baptism and prayer," a phrase never used anywhere by any Presbyterian Church of any theological stripe whatsoever. A native of the heart of European Lutheranism apparently can no longer be expected to be much acquainted with Protestantism and its ways.
And I'm surprised this hasn't been remarked upon in the secular press?
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