Stieg Larsson: Behind the Dragon Tattoo

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PREFACE

Stieg, I’m here.
We’re taking care of this.
Hang on.

Expo’s Photo Editor
November 9, 2004

Stieg Larsson - fifty-year old heavy coffee drinker and three-pack-a-day smoker - was anxious to get back to his office. He had words to write, deadlines to meet.

Giving up on the elevator, which seemed to have a problem, the editor of Expo magazine took the stairs. Out of shape - from lack of exercise, cigarettes and bad food - he failed to realize scaling seven flights was a lousy idea.

“I don’t have time for this,” he’d said. But when he reached the office, sweating and out-of-breath, his life was out of time.

Stieg died that day, of a heart attack. The day before, he’d met with a film producer who thought his trilogy of yet-unpublished crime stories might make good movies.

Although Larsson could not “hang on,” his publisher did. Nordstedts was months away from releasing the first of three books which Stieg called his “Millennium series.” (Piratförlaget had twice rejected Stieg's manuscripts.)

He’d planned a total of ten novels. The fourth - in progress on November 9, 2004 - may never be published. Although Stieg had written about 250 pages, by the time of his death, his family is unwilling - at least for now - to allow anyone to finish it.

Who was Stieg Larsson, the man behind Lisbeth Salander and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? And ... where are all those places, with the difficult-to-pronounce names, which also star in his stories?