It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day–which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call.

Mikael Blomkvist is an investigative journalist, trying to uncover the corruption and incompetence in the financial sector and the branch of journalism that reports on it. That has made him unpopular with both his colleagues and the wealthy (and thus powerful) individuals he attacks. A court conviction for libel forces him to take a break (including a stint in prison), so he decides to move (or is talked into moving) to a small island inhabited by the Vanger clan, one of Sweden's wealthiest old-money families, under the pretense to ghostwrite an autobiography for the aging Vanger scion, but with the real mission of finding the murderer of Vanger's niece, who disappeared over forty years ago. He gets help from Lisbeth Salander, a young, pierced, tattooed and obviously troubled private investigator (and computer hacker).

The main characters seem to be based on Larsson's own life, who himself was an editor of an investigative magazine, and an activist against right-wing and racist organizations. The unpleasant topic of the book is sexual violence against women, with Lisbeth Salander at the center, named after the victim of a brutal rape that Larsson witnessed in his youth. The only reason that I did not immediately buy the two sequels is that I need something more light-hearted to go in between.

This is the first book in Larsson's Millennium (named after Blomkvist's magazine) trilogy, it was published in 2005 and made him the world's second best-selling author of 2008. Its two sequels are called The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, so that we can expect Lisbeth to play a central role in them as well. All three books have been turned into movies in Sweden and a Hollywood version (Daniel Craig, directed by David Fincher) is in production right now. Unfortunately, Larsson himself cannot enjoy his recent fame, because he passed away in 2004 (at the age of 50, and according to Wikipedia of natural causes, not related to the death threats brought against him because of his work), leaving behind the three unpublished manuscripts. There are apparently also three quarters of a fourth novel and potentially outlines for a fifth and sixth of what he seems to have intended as a ten book series.