The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This book, originally published in Sweden after Larsson's death, is in many ways an old-fashioned morality tale: Crime, both white-collar and cold-blooded, is at its heart, and it is a scathing indictment of the conscience-shocking behavior of men in power. They embezzle; they rape; they murder. But this idea is not new, and it is not what makes the book so compulsively readable. Rather, it is the murder mystery at the story's center that compels the reader forward: Larsson has, first and foremost, written a heckuva thriller.

The story's protagonist is not a detective but a financial journalist (Larsson himself worked for many years as an editor). Recently (and perhaps wrongly) convicted of libel, Mikael Blomkvist is contacted by Henrik Vanger, an aging former CEO and member of a well-known corporate dynasty, to solve a murder that occurred over 40 years ago: his beloved niece Harriet disappeared without a trace from a small island off the Swedish coast. The murder perplexed family members and police officials alike; nevertheless, Vanger wants Blomkvist to give it a shot.

This premise is one of several moments in the book in which Larsson demands that the reader suspend her disbelief. Blomkvist drops everything to live on an island with Vanger for an entire year; he attracts and beds women with unrelenting ease; his hacker accomplice can gather literally any information he needs within 24 hours. More central to the story's progress is the improbable circumstances under which the teenage Harriet was murdered: Because a fire occurred on the island's only bridge to the mainland that same day, the case is a so-called "locked room mystery." Only about 15 people, all of them members of the Vanger clan, could have actually committed the crime.

I initially balked at what struck me as obvious plot devices. However, this book is not necessarily attempting realism. It is a thriller, and thrillers do not operate under the same rules as realistic fiction, my normal domain as a reader. Harriet's murder is an engaging puzzle precisely because it can be logically investigated and neatly analyzed.

In many ways, though, the murder itself is a plot device, meant to support Larsson's central thesis: power corrupts. Corporate and government officials, both those involved in the murder and those featured in related subplots, are guilty of financial corruption and sadistic personal habits. Yet Larsson's accusatory finger points inward, as well. Even the story's heroes are frequently morally degenerate. Obvious underdogs, righteous journalists, victimized women--they are sympathetic, but they also lie, cheat, and commit violent crimes of their own.

Incidentally, that fact is probably what saves the novel from slipping into self-important moralism: it raises questions even as it indicts. When is violence wrong, and when is it necessary? When should then truth be concealed? When does an end justify the means? These questions are interesting, if not always smoothly or subtly executed, and they have remained with me now that the book is done. But while I read, I read for one reason: What really happened to Harriet that day? The answer, and the manner in which it unfolds, is enough to make the book worth reading.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld has done something that many young writers with smash-hit first novels are unable to do: she's gotten better. Prep was a socially conscious and deliciously catty look at an elite boarding school: Gossip Girls for the literate. Following Prep, she quietly released the even lighter The Man of My Dreams, which, I admit, I didn't even pick up. Sittenfeld struck me as a "French-fry" writer: you know there's a real potato in there somewhere, but it's buried under a heck of a lot of grease.

American Wife retains all of Prep's best qualities--class analysis, vivid characterization, and a gut-wrenching lesbian subplot--while avoiding its major pitfall: an irksome narrator. Lee Fiora was articulate and intelligent, but she was also cowardly and conniving; while I was able to stomach her, several readers I know found her grating. But Alice Blackwell, whose life we follow in American Wife, is even-tempered and compassionate. She is also somewhat timid and passive, but her flaws don't make her unbearable; they make her human.

And human is exactly what Sittenfeld is shooting for. American Wife has been widely publicized as a fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bush. From early tragedy to presidential paramour, Mrs. Bush's life is mapped out in exquisite, often painful detail, and it includes the intrigues of several thinly veiled public figures. The strength of this book lies in Sittenfeld's ability to render ambiguous even the most apparently monolithic characters: the feisty grandmother has a repressed, conventional side; the shy librarian has her secrets; and Charlie Blackwell, future president of the United Sates, is by turns drunken, sweet, ignorant, goofy, and well-meaning (though in all cases he is decidedly out of his element once in the Oval Office).

By the end of the book, I felt--gulp--compassion for some of the world's best-known Republicans (and I lean pretty far to the left). To me, this ability to make sympathetic people who are usually reduced to caricature was the book's biggest feat. But it is also the quality that might turn others off: in some ways, the book is a traditional "apology," providing explanations, even excuses, where perhaps there should be none. If a president makes huge mistakes and costs thousands of lives, does it really matter whether he was basically well-intentioned?

(Of course, it is also helpful--but oddly difficult--to remember that these are characters, not the men themselves. Sittenfeld is not writing biography, however closely her "fictional" situations mirror reality.)

The book is a quick read, if not quite as easy as Prep, and it satisfies as an intellectual's version of "beach book." In American Wife, Sittenfeld proves she doesn't want to be a "French fry" or any kind of tasty side dish: she's aiming for the main course. With few missteps, she makes it.