The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo and The Girl who Played with Fire are the two sensational books so far published in English of the trilogy. The third one, if I remember well, should come this Fall in English (it has already been published in many other languages, including Catalan and Spanish thus far).
How I heard about his trilogy and decided to get into it was a bit random. Everyone in Barcelona had heard of it since last Christmas (08), everyone except for me. Some day I was watching the Catalan news online and they were talking about this new book (which turned out to be the third). I was not paying much attention to it, but at some point Ferran Torrent (a writer from València whose books I tend to enjoy) appeared on the screen and said 'Wow, with this new book we'll be back again to the 3-hour-long sleep nights and feel pretty knackered for a whole week until we are done with it'. To me, this was enough to inquire about the book, so when I got to BarcelonaI learned that half of my relatives and friends had read at least one of them, and none said that he had not been absolutely thrilled by it.
So I started with the first and eventually got to the 3 hour-long-sleep nights. Awesome. It takes a bit to get addicted to the story, since the first, say, 150 pages, are a description of the characterts and the whole situation. But once action starts taking place, you can't help it and just can't see the moment in which you are going to switch your light off.
Then I started the second and a similar thing happened. Done in a week. Funny (or sad, I'd say) thing is, them both somehow entail a huge criticism on women's discrimination in current western societies. Larsson died not too long after having finished the trilogy. He had been living with this woman for basically all his life. Nonetheless, NO SINGLE cent of the profits made thanks to Larsson's books are ending up in her hands. Why? They were not married, so it's his brother and dad who are enjoying all the rents. If Larsson knew, he'd probably awake from his grave to show them a lesson or two.
ps. Once Larsson was asked on the success of his books. One of the things he said is that he gave his male characters a femenine attitude and vice-versa. I didn't hear of it till after finishing the first book, and, yep, once I came to think about it, it did strike me as true.
