Am I Alone in Finding This Book Tedious Trash? (From The Oxford Times)

Am I Alone in Finding This Book Tedious Trash?

3:34pm Wednesday 7th July 2010 in

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There is a funny thing about me and crime fiction: however enthusiastic I am about the arrival of some new writer, I always find myself very quickly tiring of her/his oeuvre. It happened with Patricia Cornwell, whom I was reading in the days when she was still Patricia D. Cornwell. It happened with Jonathan Kellerman, with Michael Dibdin, with Henning Mankell. It happened — as I am almost ashamed to admit — with both P. D. James and her friend (though political foe) Ruth Rendell. And now it has happened with Stieg Larsson.

OK, I know he wrote only three novels before dying — poor bloke — at 50 with no hint of the huge posthumous success he was to enjoy. The difficultly I have is that I have been able to finish only two of them.

I galloped through The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, thinking it was pretty hot stuff (that this also applied in the sexual sense — too much, too often — was one of the book’s only minuses). I found The Girl Who Played With Fire a breeze to read, too. But The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, I really couldn’t get on with. I was lost over details of the plot almost from Page 1. At one point I even forgot who Mikael Blomkvist was. He’s the hero, for heaven’s sake! Now my bookmark is stuck on Page 158, with nearly 500 more remaining and unlikely to be read. Is it me, or what?

I realise, by the way, that I have supplied this piece with a Daily Mail-style ‘question’ headline. The difference is that I expect the answer to be yes