Dragon Tattoo

This is a cracking book and a good read.  I have not seen the film, but enjoyed the book very much.  It is the first of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.
The central story concerns a teenage girl who disappeared half a generation ago.  Her uncle is convinced she was murdered by one of the family, who is continuing to taunt him by sending a pressed flower on her birthday each year.

Mikael Blomkvist is engaged to re-investigate the mystery while ostensibly working on a chronicle of the family history.  His story, and that of the Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo are wrapped around the central story, as they agree to work together on the investigation.
For the first half of the book their stories are quite separate. Mikael runs a financial journal, called Millennium, which gives the trilogy its name, and faces a prison sentence when he is unable to defend the magazine against a libel claim.  Lisbeth's story is all the more shocking, and all the more so due the the juxtaposition of the two stories in the text at certain points.
There are some gruesome crimes in the book.  They are grim, but the presentation is not unnecessarily gory. Similarly, there are sex scenes, but the telling is not salacious. They are just part of the story.
It is a satisfying story, with no obvious loose ends, but clearly some threads that get picked up in the following books. Whether you go on to read the other two or not, this is an enjoyable book.