Two reporters have been murdered.  On the eve of the publication of their scandalous sex-trafficking exposé, the two are brutally slain.  In addition, a well-respected lawyer has also been murdered with the same gun on the same night.  How are these murders connected?  All the evidence, including fingerprints on the murder weapon, point to Lisbeth Salander.  To the police, it is an open and shut case.  Salander’s visit to the two reporters’ apartment just before the murders, the fact that the now-dead lawyer was her legal guardian, and her previous history of mental illness, instability and violence, are all nails in her coffin.  The only problem is that she has disappeared.

 

To Mikail Blomkvist, friend and former lover of Salander’s, it is obvious that the murders had everything to do with the sex-trafficking story.  He is determined to find Salander and prove her innocence, even if it means withholding evidence from the police.  

 

In this second installment of Larsson’s Swedish trilogy, Salander, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo returns as the antisocial but brilliant computer hacker, who is also blessed with a photographic memory.  Readers learn about her troubled upbringing in which she was placed in a children’s psychiatric facility for her violent behavior at the age of twelve.  The pieces of the puzzle fall into place as her secrets reveal her as the improbable central character in the sex-trafficking scandal and the murders.