The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.

It must feel wonderful to think yourself so much more intelligent and knowledgeable about absolutely everything than anyone else.

You're wrong about the "grand total of two women" anyway.

Kitten - I said nothing about your "sexual mores" and was not patronising you when I said that attitudes in Sweden towards sex are not the same as the UK. Which is a correct and relevant statement, by the way.

My point which you have spectacularly and self-consciously missed was that it is not unrealistic in Sweden for a man who is not a sex God to have more than 1 sexual partner, and Blomkvist had sex with a grand total of two women in the book - his long-term lover and Lisbeth. Not "virtually every woman he met had sex with him", as you said.

Anyway, none of this is about you and it is just a book, so not worth having a hissy fit imho.

I loved them, they were long winded, but still excellent. I'm sad that there will be no more.

I enjoyed them immensely. Great page turners. I don't expect crime fiction to be very realistic.

Book 1 is good, decent enough. Glad I read it.
The other books are just ridiculous far-fetched fantasy, I couldn't read them fully.
I could write a very long rant on the ridiculous "romance" and characters. I hate fantasy crime fiction. Give me humour or subtle psychology.

In Sweden, attitudes towards sex are not the same as in the UK

Please don't patronise me. You have no clue about my background, still less my sexual mores.

I agree 100% with kitten. I only got through the first book as I had to read it for work and it was too long by at least half.
99p is 98p too expensive IMO.

I thought they were written to be rather titillating in places, which was totally at odds with the subject matter over the three books. I felt quite ashamed that I'd read them in one way. The final part of book 3 is great, though.

I didn't think it was dull, at all. I read the first one in the week before DS' birth. 2nd one in the 5 days in the hospital after his birth (Yes, breastfeeding newborn DS with the book in my other hand. My mum was ). And 3rd in the series didn't last long, either.

Yes, there is lots of detail but I imagine that is how real investigations are - you have to look at everyone and learn about them to some degree before you can eliminate them.

In Sweden, attitudes towards sex are not the same as in the UK. It is not at all unreasonable for that guy to be having sex with his long-term colleague and then with Lisbeth Salander who clearly has a liberal sexual attitude. None of this felt incredible to me.

Oh and I don't know what you mean by "unlikeable", but I loved Lisbeth Salander The strongest female character to hit the shelves in years. By far.

They're my absolute favourite series of books. I got so involved and (rarely for me recently) I really, really believed and cared about the characters.
The final courtroom bit is one of my favourite bits of reading ever!

Kitten I can totally see why people wouldn't like them but if you ever get the chance to see the original Swedish version of the films, give them a go!

It was tremendously dull, full of unnecessary detail and background that was not germane to the story. The characters were all unlikeable and the central character did not come over as being attractive in any way whatsoever, yet virtually every woman he met had sex with him. I could go on, but that's a start.

It came over to me as a first draft. There is a readable story in there, but it needed a lot of fearless editing, which it plainly did not get.

What was it that you hated so much?

I read the first one and hated it. I kept going because people assured me that it got really good later on and would be worth it. It didn't and it wasn't.

Thanks, love these books. Looking forward to reading them again on kindle.

I don't have a Kindle or e-reader, but I loved these books.

I would read again in a heartbeat!

Ooh. Nice, thanks for the heads up. I read all three in print but wouldn't mind reading them all again.

Oh will look into this. Thanks