Mr B was a bit disgruntled on Saturday. He'd had to fork out a
tenner, so that he and small child could sit at the back of a hot
sticky room and listen to me talk for an hour. (Even our eight year
old complained he gets enough of that for free at home.) We were in
Thame Town Hall, I on the thriller panel, they in the audience, as
part of the inaugural Thame Arts and Literature Festival.
He's not fulsome in his praise, Mr B. This
was the first such event he's been to and when I asked him
afterwards how he thought it went, he said: 'You probably shouldn't
have slagged off Stieg Larsson. He sells a lot more than you
do.'
Well, I can't argue with that. But if I have to put up with
people posting comments on Amazon about my "average and often
clumsy novels", I don't see why I can't occasionally question
another writer's phenomenal success.
And before you start muttering about sour grapes can I preface
what I'm about to say by making clear that I'm a huge Dan Brown
fan, consider JK Rowling to be a near genius, believe Lee Child to
be almost as sexy in real life as his fictional counterpart, Jack
Reacher, and if Stephen King were ever to ask, which I seriously
doubt he would, the answer is a definite: yes, I will run away with
you. I do not envy other writers' their massive success; as long as
I believe it to be deserved.
Stieg Larsson though?
I've only read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I'm told the
trilogy gets better as it goes along but, I'm sorry, that's like
saying a book starts off weak but picks up a third of the way
through. In this incredibly competitive marketplace, such a book
has no business on the shelves.
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo needed the attention of a thumping
good editor, in my view. One like my own, for example, because
there's no way a book with something like fifty pages of financial
information would ever get past her red pen. Especially as it's
not, ultimately, remotely necessary to the plot.
Holding, as you can see, strong views on the subject of Mr L,
I'd been looking forward to meeting my fellow panelist in Thame,
Barry Forshaw, author of the first biography of Stieg, called "The
Man Who Left Too Soon." Barry is a journalist, book critic
and crime editor. He's also written several non-fiction books about
the crime genre and has a close to encyclopaedic knowledge of the
subject. If anybody would be able to tell me what the fuss was
about, it was Barry. Because as far as I could see, the only thing
the book has in its favour is the, admittedly fabulous, main
character, Lisbeth Salander.
She's completely wonderful, I agree, and I so wish I'd invented
her, but surely even a truly superb main character isn't enough, in
itself, to turn an otherwise weak book into a great one?
Barry's take on the Larsson phenomenon? His success was down to
two factors. The wonderful Lisbeth. And Larsson's premature
death.
So there you go. That's what I have to do to hit the big time.
Invent an absolutely corker of a main character. And die.
Now I'll probably spend the rest of this exceptionally beautiful
late June day imagining how such a death might occur. And if you
want to take issue with my Larsson comments, please, feel free. I
would genuinely love to know what makes this book deserve the
success it has had. Convince me and not only will I read it again,
I'll even buy it again.