By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
With success comes copy cats and, of course, (hopefully funny) parodies. Remember The Da Vinci Cod? Henry Potty and the Deathly Paper Shortage? Nightlite? Bored of the Rings? Now it's time to riff on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. We haven't read the books but the titles are delicious. The Girl With the Sturgeon Tattoo by Lars Arffssen will be published Aug. 30 by St. Martin's Press. Arffssen is described in the author bio as being most famous for his investigation of the Swedish meatball. In reality: he's Lawrence Douglas, a Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. The plot: Stockholm's reindeer are being stalked by a serial killer known as the Reindeer Strangler and the world's leading expert on Baltic sturgeon is in trouble too. The police take hacker Lizzy Salamander into custody. Journalist Mikeal Bloomberg fights to prove Lizzy's innocence. Out the same week: The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo by Adam Roberts, a professor of 19th century literature at London University. It's published by Gollancz. Lizbreath Salamander stars as the dragon who boasts the tattoo of a a girl on her back. The plot includes the search for a missing dragon and dragons' apparent need for fireproof home furnishings. Two of these may be all we need.
