It’s a little ritual I have:  to take a day near the end of April of beginning of May, stock up on chocolate and skim milk and read a mystery from start to finish.  I started the practice decades ago during college.  I’d finish my last exam but because I worked with housing, I couldn’t leave until everyone else went home.  So I’d take a new pack of Oreos and a gallon of milk to my room and crawl into bed and read.  Sometimes I’d read several books in as many days.  These days, I’m lucky to get in one.  But it’s a treat.

So this year I read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  I never plan ahead what I will read on the magic day–I just go to my shelf and pick the book that calls to me from my “I’ll Read This Someday” shelf.   I knew only my mother liked it (she’s a pretty good book recommender), that the author had died young just after delivering the manuscript to his publisher, and that it is the first of a trilogy (evidently he delivered all three to his publisher before he died).  Oh, and it’s been an international sensation.

Well, I certainly liked it well enough to read the whole thing in one day.  It’s written as many popular thrillers are–with quirky characters cast into a strange land, with cliffhanger endings at the end of most chapters, with private troubles and local social troubles and humanity-level troubles all intermingling.  That’s all stuff I strive to do in my own books.  I’m alway happy to see how someone else does it.  And I loved his characterization–such a varied group of people, each depicted in strong ways.  I don’t want to give too much away by talking about it–but studying how he brought people to life as quickly as he did was useful to me.

***  Mild spoiler alert.  I don’t tell you anything about the mystery plot but I do mention some of the events of the book, so if you don’t want to know anything, don’t read any more.

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The only thing I didn’t like was the level of sexual violence against women in it–the graphically represented stuff.  Now take that with a grain of salt, oh readers!  I’ll just remind you all–I’m a terrific wimp.  I have a very strong reaction against this sort of thing.  Even network television flips me out.  I know bad things happen and it’s even okay with me if they happen in books and movies and television.  But I’m the sort who like to have suspense built and then suggestions made.  Probably because I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock movies which still are some of the scariest things ever made.  Suggestion engages my imagination.  Graphic representation just freaks me out.

But that’s me and not most everyone else on the planet, I know.  And as that sort of thing goes, this novel is mild.  I will read his next book one day, but I wouldn’t move it to the top of my list.