The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who played with Fire and The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

There has been enough and more hype around the 'Millennium Trilogy' by Stieg Larsson. I intend to add to it with much joy. I finished the first and second books through the night - on two separate nights. Till four a.m. Or something. The third took two nights but it's a monster of a book. I should be given an award for super-fast reader. Really.
The stories they tell are fairly straightforward crime fiction. That the villains are mostly 'men who hate women' (the Swedish title for the first book in the series) helped me relate to the stories better, one can't help but feel a sneaking sympathy for villains who are evil for the heck of it. I can hate the villains in these books with all my feminist passion and not feel an iota of grief over their deaths. Cool, no? 

Also the heroine is...well..awesome. Lisbeth Salander fights an unjust fate thrust on her by blind institutions with a hangdog determination but that's not why I love her. She's utterly lawless but completely ethical. She lives a life bound by her particular code of ethics, not by the laws of the land. She's socially handicapped - she doesn't know how to form and hold relationships, yet there are always a few who will love her - another reason for me to relate to her. Her sexuality is fluid - she sleeps with men and women because she finds sex an enjoyable pastime, not because she has self-esteem issues or nonsense like that - one MORE reason for me to love her.

See, that's the thing. It's impossible to write hoity-toity reviews, analysing plot and character for these books. They sucked in me in, literally, and continue to have a deep, emotional hold on me.
These books have been translated from Swedish. The fact that they come from another cultural environment - unlike the annoyingly moralistic English or American crime fiction - is beautifully obvious. Highly recommended.