1300 sign to borrow 'Dragon Tattoo'

Crime thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has Aucklanders hooked, with 1300 people in the region waiting to borrow a copy from their local library.

Auckland city libraries have 404 people waiting for the book in its area alone - an impressive number, but a pale shadow compared with the 1000 who waited in the queue during the peak popularity of vampire romance Twilight last year.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - the first in a trilogy featuring investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his computer-hacking sidekick, Lisbeth Salander - is pitched at an older readership than Stephenie Meyer's chaste vampire series, two of which have been made into hit movies.

Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack after delivering the series to his publisher and did not live to see the novels become a success.

His books have sold five million copies worldwide and New Zealand booksellers named them among the most popular titles of last year.

Hollywood directors are said to be lining up to remake The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is already the subject of a low-budget, yet popular Swedish movie.

Meanwhile, New Zealanders are already queuing for tickets to see the third movie in the Twilight series, Eclipse, when it opens here on July 1.

Keen fans have already begun buying tickets to a marathon screening at Sky City cinemas on June 30. Audiences will sit through Twilight and its follow-up, New Moon, before a debut midnight screening of Eclipse.