The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

Every year for the past 36 years, Henrik Vanger receives an anonymous dried flower in a picture frame on November 1, his birthday. He has all of the frames displayed on a wall in his house. Every year, he phones his friend, a retired detective-superintendent, who shares his birthday and his age, and tells him about the latest flower. They can only wonder who sent it and why.

In December 2002, Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of the Swedish political magazine Millennium, loses a libel case involving allegations about billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Blomkvist is sentenced to three months (deferred) in prison, and ordered to pay hefty damages and costs. Soon afterwards, he is invited to meet Henrik Vanger, the retired CEO of the Vanger Corporation, unaware that Vanger has checked into his personal and professional history; the investigation of Blomkvist's circumstances has been carried out by Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but deeply troubled researcher and computer hacker.

Vanger promises to provide Blomkvist with evidence against Wennerström in return for discovering what happened to Vanger's grandniece, Harriet, who disappeared in 1966 during a family gathering at the Vanger estate on Hedeby Island the same day that a traffic accident on a bridge temporarily cut off the island from the mainland. Blomkvist stays on the island while researching the Vanger family history and Harriet's disappearance. He meets several members of the Vanger clan, including Harriet's brother, Martin, current CEO of the company; Isabella, Martin and Harriet's mother; and Cecilia, a headmistress who was Harriet's younger aunt and friend, who seduces Blomkvist later in the novel. Meanwhile, Salander's state-appointed legal guardian Holger Palmgren suffers a stroke. He is replaced by Nils Bjurman, who extorts sexual acts from Salander and eventually rapes her. After secretly recording her assault, Salander takes her revenge, torturing Bjurman and threatening to ruin him unless he gives her full control over her life and finances. She then uses a tattoo machine to brand him as a rapist.

On Hedeby Island, Blomkvist pursues new evidence in Harriet's disappearance. A key piece of evidence is a series of photographs taken of Harriet at a parade shortly before she disappeared. These show her reacting with discomfort to something she sees. Blomkvist tracks down a photograph taken by someone who had been standing next to Harriet. He concludes that she was reacting to a young man standing across the street, but the image is too indistinct to identify him. Blomkvist also discovers a set of names and numbers believed to be old telephone numbers in Harriet's journal; however, his daughter Pernilla identifies them as quotes from the Book of Leviticus, which describe rules about violent punishment of women. Blomkvist correlates one of them with the grotesque murder of a Vanger Corporation secretary in 1949, and realizes that he may be on the trail of an old serial killer. Vanger's lawyer suggests Salander as a research assistant.

Blomkvist realises that Salander hacked into his computer for the initial report, and confronts her to ask her for help with the investigation, to which she agrees. The two eventually become casual lovers. Meanwhile, Salander uncovers the remaining four murders corresponding to the Bible quotes in Harriet's journal, as well as several more that fit the profile. However, they realize this is more than just an old cold case when a local cat is left dismembered on their porch, and Blomkvist is shot at from a distance during an afternoon jog.

Convinced that there must be a connection between the murders and the Vanger family, Salander searches through the Vanger Corporation archives. She notices that most of the murders occurred in locations where the corporation did business. She begins to suspect that the murderer was Gottfried Vanger, Martin and Harriet's deceased father, but she finds out that he died prior to the last murder. While Salander continues to hunt through the archives, Blomkvist identifies the young man in the photograph by matching the shirt he wore to the uniform of boys at Martin Vanger's school. However, before he can do anything, Martin takes Blomkvist prisoner, revealing that Gottfried "initiated" him into the ritual rape and murder of women before his own death, and implies that Gottfried sexually abused both him and Harriet. After Gottfried's death, Martin continued murdering women, but abandoned the religious themes which motivated his father. Martin questions Blomkvist about what he's discovered about Harriet and Blomkvist realizes that Martin did not murder his sister. Martin attempts to kill Blomkvist, but Salander — who had made the connection with Martin independently — arrives and attacks him. Martin flees by car, pursued by Salander, and commits suicide by purposely colliding with an oncoming truck.

Believing that Cecilia's sister Anita, who now lives in London, is the only relative who might know something about Harriet's fate, Blomkvist and Salander tap her phone and learn that Harriet is still alive and living under Anita's name in Australia. When Blomkvist flies there to meet her, Harriet tells him the truth about her disappearance: her father Gottfried had repeatedly raped her, until she killed him in self-defense. That did not solve the problem however, as Martin took his father's role and continued to rape her. Harriet found some peace when Martin was sent away to preparatory school, but he returned the day of her disappearance. Harriet realized she would never be free of him unless she ran away, so she found a place to hide during the traffic accident, and Anita smuggled her to the mainland the next morning. Blomkvist persuades Harriet to return to Sweden, where she reunites with Henrik. Blomkvist then accompanies Salander to her mother's funeral.

Back in Sweden, Blomkvist learns that the evidence against Wennerström that Vanger promised him is useless. However, Salander hacked Wennerström's computer and discovered that his crimes went far beyond what Blomkvist documented. Using her evidence, Blomkvist prints an exposé and a book which ruin Wennerström and catapult Millennium to national prominence. Salander, using her hacking skills, succeeds in stealing some 2.6 billion kr (about $260 million USD) from Wennerström's secret bank account. Blomkvist and Salander spend Christmas together in his holiday retreat. Shortly after, she goes to Blomkvist's home, intending to declare her love for him and give him a Christmas present, but when she sees him with his long-time lover and business partner Erika Berger, she throws the present in a dumpster and leaves.

As a postscript, Salander continues to monitor Wennerström and after six months, anonymously informs a lawyer in Miami of his whereabouts. Four days later the body of Wennerström is found in Marbella, Spain, shot three times in the head.