Is Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really about violence against women?

Well by the middle third of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" some action begins, as two of the three strands get into motion. Lisbeth Salander is raped by her legal guardian, and she goes after him with a vengeance on her 3rd visit. And Mikael Blomkvist gathers a lot of info about the Vanger family and the unexplained death of disappearance 38 years ago of niece Harriet. Okay. Why is this all so dissatisfying? Because neither of these plots move along because of any great skill, insight, or accomplishment on the part of either protagonist. Though Larsson notes that Salander considered many different strategies for revenge against her guardian, ultimately, what does she do? Hidden-camera surveillance of his attack on her (conveniently, she's a detective with access to lots of equipment), then on 3rd visit nails him with a Taser and chains him to the bed (as he did to her). Yes, he's hateful to a surreal degree - but can't the plot be interesting? Can't there be some tension or ambiguity? Can't we worry for Salander a bit (we never do)? And if that plot is two-dimensional at best, what to make of Blomkvist and his investigations? He gets his big break when he examines supposedly the last photo of Harriet, taken at a festival in town, notices she's staring off camera at something that he assumes scares her; he goes to a newspaper office, finds dozens of photos from this same photo shoot (40 years ago!), sees a couple taking a snapshot in one of the pix, reads a sticker on their car, tracks them down (40 years later!) in a small town... Oh, please! This is just authorial noodling. Character has to drive plot, and plot has to include action, scenes, settings - not just material, events, facts. How can this book be so popular? Perhaps the patina of social consciousness, these interpolated section headings that note how many Swedish women are victims of violence. Yes, I believe that - but simply noting a social problem does not make a novel into an examination of one. Why does this occur? Who are the victims? the perpetrators? How do we stop this? Larssen depicts violence against women in one scene (so far) and he references (but does not describe it) in several others, but nothing in this book helps me understand violence against women. I have seldom, maybe never, read a book so full of incident and so far from the interior life of its characters.