The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Crime / drama /horror

By Stieg Larsson

Sweden

Publisher: Qercus

Also in the series: The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

The Millenium series, as these three books are known, is a chilling, dark expose of the world of sexual violence against women in Sweden. The author died in 2004 but it is appropriate to note that his alternate title was “Men Who Hate Women”. Larson also looked at the corrupt world of big Swedish capitalists and the shoddy investigative reporting that keeps letting them get away with it. As a reporter himself he wrote from experience. He looks at just how responsible the Swedish institutions like the police and government are for turning a victim into a criminal. Larson weaves these themes into detective stories but the underlying horror of the treatment of women is a strong point in each book.

Lisbeth Salander is a girl in her twenties who has spent much of her life since she was twelve in a mental institution. Her history goes back to her schooldays when she beat up a bully who kept taunting her at school. When she fought back she was regarded as the villain by the school staff and earned a reputation for violence. Her mother was the sexual plaything of a brutal, violent man and she has had two daughters to him, Lisbeth and a sister. One night he bashed her so savagely that she had to be put in a home under constant medical care, suffering from brain damage. Strangely the police did nothing about it (we find out why later in the series). Salander’s response was to throw a petrol bomb into her father’s car. His severe burns caused him to lose a foot and he hates Salander. The lonely twelve year old girl was institutionalised and abused by Peter Teleborian, a cruel psychologist, over a period of years before her release into the guardianship of an elderly solicitor, Palmgren. She had now developed such a mistrust of authority figures that she simply wouldn’t speak to them, but with patience and kind concern Palmgren has come to establish a sort of trust with her.

When Palmgren has a stroke Salander is placed under the guardianship of Nils Bjurman, a thoroughly nasty lawyer who rapes and mistreats Salander as well as other young girls under his control. Her revenge on him is rather poetic and appropriate, but will come back to haunt her.

She has one bright spot in her life. She is a superb computer hacker. She was employed part-time by Milton Security on a contract basis. The manager of Milton still could not break through her reserve, but like Palmgren she came to trust him – a little.

In a separate matter a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, has published the corrupt dealings of a well known businessman, Wennerstrom. Wennerstrom has taken Mikael to court for slander and none of Mikael’s evidence can now be corroborated. It appears that he has been set up with false information, but he is now facing a short prison sentence and a fine that will bankrupt Millenium, the magazine he works for. While he waits for his prison term to come up in Sweden’s overloaded prisons he accepts a job for elderly retired businessman Henrik Vanger. Vanger’s daughter disappeared some thirty years ago and he has become obsessed with finding out what happened to her. The body was never found. Mikael is to go through all the evidence one more time and see if he can work out what happened. As a further enticement Vanger offers Mikael details of Wennerstrom’s dirty deals and how he pulled them off and got away with it. Vanger has hired Salander to dig into Wennerstrom’s history so the two of them meet. Mikael needs more information from the computer records of the time and is astounded when he finds out about Salander’s hacking ability.

Mikael and Salander find inconsistencies in the information held by the police. The Vanger family is a group of hostile misfits and as Mikael gets closer to the truth he realises a family member must have been involved in the girl’s disappearance. What he finds is horrifying. It involves the systematic kidnapping, rape and torture of young women over a very long period. It almost costs him his life.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

In the second book Salander is enjoying her semi-independence from Bjurman. She is still theoretically under his guardianship but she is confident that he will not be playing any more nasty tricks on her following the rough justice she meted out to him. She has managed to hack Wennerstrom’s secret bank accounts before Mikael’s new revelations crashed his business spectacularly. Salander transferred a large amount of Wennerstrom’s illegal money to her own accounts, and she is now touring around the world on the proceeds.

Mikael is back at work at Millenium. One of the young reporters is working on an expose of the sex trade involving Russian girls. His article will implicate judges, policemen and others in power. The main racket seems to be run by a mysterious man named Zala. The reporter’s girlfriend is also doing a thesis on the subject of female abuse in Sweden. He gets too close to the truth and he and his girlfriend are murdered. So is Nils Bjurman, Salander’s guardian. Since she seems to have something in common with each victim and she is being regarded as the murderer. A corrupt policeman and an incompetent Prosecutor are leaking information to their media contacts suggesting that Salander is a violent Satan-worshipping prostitute as well as a killer. Once again she is being mistreated by the very people who are supposed to be protecting her. As the murder toll mounts she is hunted throughout Sweden.

Salander starts investigating the murders and tracking the potential suspects in the only way she can – by using her computer hacking skills. Between her and Mikael they gradually uncover a horrifying story of murders and cover-ups going into the higher reaches of Sweden’s police and security organisations. There are honest police, however, and Inspector Bublanski is prepared to look for proof or otherwise. The same cannot be said of some of his policemen who are ardent women-haters and some of whom are actively involved in the sex slave racket. Even retired officers are coming out to plot against Salander. The rights of one antisocial girl are unimportant compared to what these faceless men see as a greater good. They consider themselves above the law in this matter.

The three separate investigations come together and the finale is bloody and gruesome. Around Salander more people are dying and it is only her survival skills that keep her going. We find out who Zala really is and get an indication of why he seems immune to police investigation. There is a direct link to Salander’s past. The finale is bloody and savage.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest

The third book in the series is more of a forensic legal treatise. Salander is in hospital with severe injuries following the climax of the previous novel. She was shot in the head and shoulder by Zala and is under police guard. As soon as the doctor discharges her she will be moved to prison to face charges of murder. There are a number of people who are working on her behalf. Now her situation is better known Mikael’s sister is going to represent her in court.

Although she is not a criminal lawyer she seems suited to the role as she is a leading campaigner for womens’ rights. She even manages to gain Salander’s grudging trust after a while. The doctor who saved her life finds Salander fascinating and Salander comes to trust him as well. He is holding off the police until she is ready to go to prison. The delay is because Mikael has arranged to smuggle a small computer in to her via the doctor and she is indulging in her favourite hobby – hacking the computers of her enemies. Inspector Bublanski is amazed at the case being set up against her by high-ranking people and is now seriously investigating a case for her innocence. Even her old guardian, Palmgren, is coming out of his nursing home to help her.

Against them is a small group of high-ranking government officers who have their own reasons for keeping her in a mental institution, under the control of their pet psychiatrist Peter Teleborian. Once again it looks like Salander is going to have her rights abused simply because she is a woman in the wrong place and therefore a target for male abuse of her rights. The bulk of the book is about the steady plodding investigations, the interference with the investigation from the highest levels, and finally the courtroom where Salander’s guilt or innocence will be decided. Her enemies cannot afford to have her acquitted. They resort to murder, attempted murder, planting “evidence” and further smears in the media to discredit her and make her look like the insane murderer they have depicted.

It is astounding that Larsson managed to get so many genres into the one story, but he has done it well. There are some holes in the plot and had he lived Larsson may have corrected these, but they are minor. With his background as a journalist Larsson managed to give us a strong picture of the publishing industry, so important to the plot in a story like this. His description of the police procedures is likewise thorough and we finish the books feeling that we have learnt something. All his major characters have strongly drawn personalities. Often those personalities are due to some unrevealed facet that will only become evident further on in the story. The long and carefully constructed plots draw out the tension, but it is the constant thread of abuse of women that holds the plots together and introduces the elements of terror that make it a more powerful story.

The books have now been made into films, but I haven’t seen them yet. I look forward to them.

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