Stieg Larsson

Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist and author whose Millennium trilogy became one of the defining international crime fiction phenomena of the 2000s, published posthumously after his sudden death from a heart attack in 2004 at age 50, just after delivering the manuscripts to his publisher. The series, beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, follows disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the fiercely private, brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander as they uncover corporate corruption, sexual violence, and institutional failure in Swedish society, with Salander becoming one of crime fiction's most distinctive and influential protagonists. Larsson himself worked for years as a journalist specializing in researching and exposing right-wing extremist and anti-democratic movements in Sweden, expertise that informs the trilogy's unflinching treatment of institutional abuse of power. The trilogy sold more than 80 million copies worldwide and was adapted into both a Swedish film trilogy and a 2011 English-language film directed by David Fincher starring Rooney Mara as Salander. New readers should start with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to meet Blomkvist and Salander from the beginning. Larsson died before seeing any of the books published or their worldwide success; his estate has since authorized additional novels continuing the series written by David Lagercrantz and, more recently, Karin Smirnoff.