‘Larsson’s dead, of course, so critics and fellow writers can treat him generously, since there’s nothing to fear from him. There are no more blockbusters in the pipeline to be dreaded, as any intelligent reader will dread the next Dan Brown. It seems that there is only this finite, completed trilogy – and what a perfect legacy that is. A trilogy is the perfect product, a publisher’s dream, for when a writer writes a mere three books, any one of us can go out and buy the complete oeuvre; any one of us can become an expert on the collected works.
‘The man himself, it can’t be denied, is a phenomenon: four years after he died he became the second highest selling author in the world. And yet, back in 2004, who would have guessed that he and his creation, a modernised Modesty Blaise, would achieve such heights? Not the modest and hard-working journalist, Stieg Larsson. Certainly not Mikael Blomkvist nor the far-from-modest Lisbeth Salander. Internationally famous as she is, she follows in a long but thinly populated line of sparky heroines of crime fiction. Before her came Modesty Blaise, as I say, and we remember the tough-girl heroines of McDermid, Reichs, Sharp, Duffy and Paretsky, but I suggest that these particular women, created by women, don’t carry the same sexual charge as those created by men. [Modesty was created by Peter O’Donnell.]
‘In one of the earliest forays into crime fiction, The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins gave us a tough, un-beautiful, un-retiring investigator, Marian Halcombe, to tackle the dastardly Count Fosco. Later, in the turbulent turn-of-the-century years, crime writers introduced us to the “new woman” – who rode bicycles, smoked, and talked back at men! But in the Golden Age these women retreated: Miss Marple and Lord Peter’s girlfriends were a lesser breed, and it wasn’t until Modesty that she lived again. Modesty was tough, her toughness learnt, like Ms Salander’s, in an abusive past and, like Ms Salander again, she wasn’t afraid to flaunt her sexuality or to ignore gender and tackle her target, man to man. What a frisson that was for Evening Standard readers – the same frisson that today’s readers find in Lisbeth Salander. And it really is a frisson, a wonderfully liberating thrill for avid readers of either gender, to come across a panther-like woman who prowls onstage to snarl and tense before she springs. Many of us found her, of course, too late, after Stieg was dead. But we did find her. We’ll read the trilogy, we’ll watch Lisbeth and Mikael on screen – knowing that we only have to stay with them through the trilogy. That’s just enough. They won’t stick around so long that we grow tired, nor are they here for such a short time that we don’t get hooked. They’re a duo and a trilogy. They’re perfect.
‘What would Larsson have thought, I wonder, if he’d been told – by one of those fictional clairvoyants that used to crop up in a story – that he, a successful journalist and moderately unsuccessful author, would achieve worldwide fame after he was dead? How would he have reacted if the devil himself had offered to exchange his corporeal life and soul for eternal fame? Larsson might have believed, as some religious people do, that we can all live on, and that we do not die as long as someone somewhere remembers our name. “Stieg Larsson,” the devil might have said, “many people will read you, they will hear your voice after you are dead.” Might he have settled for that? How might any writer respond to Mephistopheles? It’s enough to tempt anyone to kick the hornets’ nest.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
Christopher Fowler’s eccentric investigators Bryant & May couldn’t be more different from Larsson’s duo, but he has examined the Millennium phenomenon in some depth: ‘For me the character of Lisbeth is not the most interesting thing about Larsson’s trilogy. From the mid-1980s onward, the spiky punk hacker-heroine, tattooed, damaged and afraid to commit, has been a staple ingredient of American comics, although Larsson takes the cliché and fleshes it out beautifully. The film version of Dragon Tattoo is forced to turn Salander into a living actress, but succeeds by carefully following Larsson’s blueprint. What I most admire is the extraordinary way in which Larsson opens the narrative to include an immense cast, and we can sense that all of them have their own lives, which only intersect at the crossing-point of Blomkvist and Salander. The crime writer’s curse is coincidence – one is often driven to coincide characters and situations for the sake of plot, but Larsson avoids this by a system of not-quite-overlapping events. It’s how real life works, of course, and makes the account more believable. The result is that when he tells you what a minor character had for breakfast it doesn’t feel like a digression. Instead, it’s a way of rounding out his world-view into a complex, tangled whole. Writers who have the rare ability to do this often seem to produce trilogies, as if they can see a vast interconnected planet of stories going on behind the main plot. It’s a talent that links Elmore Leonard’s crime books to Susanna Clarke’s fantasies, and for me is the sign of a master storyteller.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: FRANK TALLIS
Frank Tallis writes historical crime fiction reflecting his experience as a clinical psychologist (the latest is Deadly Communion), so shows acuity in analysing the resonances that exist between psychotherapy and detection: ‘For Larsson, crimes are like symptoms and the process of detection is very similar to psychotherapy. We have to dig deep, to find the perpetrator or the traumatic memory. Larsson exploits these relationships in an inspired way. We are presented with a mystery – but embedded within it is another, and perhaps more compelling mystery: that of a violent, antisocial young woman who has been labelled psychotic and appears to have obsessive and autistic personality characteristics. At one point she is described as looking like a half-witted 15-year-old anarchist. As her resourcefulness and impressive talents are revealed, we want to know – more than anything else – the answers to questions that a psychotherapist would ask. Why is she the way she is? What motivates her? What makes her tick? We are as interested in Salander’s personal psychology as we are in the overarching plot.
‘Although Salander is given various psychiatric labels, an accurate diagnosis seems impossible. In this respect, Larsson demonstrates his liberal credentials, because, in actual fact, there is nothing “wrong” with her at all. She is not medically ill. One is reminded of stalwarts of the anti-psychiatry movement, renegades like Thomas Szasz and R D Laing, who suggested that a mind can only be sick in a metaphorical sense, and that “madness” is the only sane response to an insane world. It is unusual for a work of genre fiction to address such profound issues. They are at the very heart of the Millennium Trilogy, and provide a satisfying philosophical underpinning to a fast-paced, dramatic narrative. Few people have been able to pull this off, but Larsson succeeds with a light touch and without the usual tub-thumping piety.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: MINETTE WALTERS
P D James and Ruth Rendell were for many years the joint holders of the title ‘Britain’s Queen of Crime’ – but for quite some time, Minette Walters has been co-opted into this august company with her remarkable series of psychologically penetrating novels. She takes the view that the principal reason Stieg Larsson has been such a global phenomenon is because he’s such an extremely accomplished writer: ‘It’s one thing to have a good idea, quite another to transpose it to the page in such a way that the setting, the characters and the plot come alive for the reader. All the best crime and thriller novels have been written by talented writers and one of the benefits of skilful prose and dialogue is that it’s easier to translate.
‘Regarding Salander… we tend to have stereotypical ideas about Swedish girls – blonde, beautiful and leggy – so Lisbeth is refreshingly unusual! You could say that the appeal of Larsson is that he paints the whole of Sweden as unusual. We’ve become used to the dour Calvinism of Henning Mankell and it was surprising to encounter the eccentric, colourful and more chaotic environment that Larsson inhabits. And his days as a crusading journalist introduced him to the true underbelly of his society, which lends real authority to his fiction.
‘I bet that Stieg’s dependence on nicotine helped him write his book
s. Smokers concentrate better and stay awake longer than non-smokers. I wish I’d met him. I’d have enjoyed sharing a fag outside in the cold while the clean-knickered brigade sat in their highly-antiseptic environment inside and discussed their asthma symptoms.’
Does his death at 50 explain to some degree the success of the books published posthumously?
‘Not in my opinion,’ Minette Walters says. ‘He was too good a writer. He would have triumphed anyway.’
Is he a feminist writer – or is there an element of exploitation in the books? Walters’ answer to this is less clear cut: ‘I’m not sure what feminism is any more so I can’t answer this. For me it’s always been equality between the sexes and I have no reason to believe that wasn’t Larsson’s view.
‘As for his legacy: if any future crime or thriller writer feels they can only succeed by aping Stieg Larsson then they should put their pen away now and adopt a career that does not require original thinking. The curse of any genre is that 90% of authors piggyback off the originality of the other 10%. It’s the originals like Larsson who continue to evolve and develop the art of novel writing.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: MARK LAWSON
In the newspaper the Guardian, Mark Lawson, one of the UK’s leading critics and broadcasters, pointed out that on a French beach he had visited, almost every sunbather of every nationality was reading one of Larsson’s novels in the numerous translations: ‘This phenomenon is improbable, given the project’s many obstacles,’ he goes on. ‘The author died before the first book even went through the editorial process and, in most such cases, readers are left with a tantalising sense of the polish further drafts might have provided. And while Swedish crime fiction already had a high reputation – through the Wallander novels of Henning Mankell – Larsson has achieved a global level of acclaim and sales which is very unusual for a story that is not originally written in English.’
Lawson has come up with an intriguing analysis of the reasons why the books have done so well: ‘My theory for the phenomenon is that Larsson took a genre which has generally sold to men – thrillers turning on technology and conspiracies – and feminised it through a highly unusual central character: Lisbeth Salander, who combines the brain of Sherlock Holmes with the martial arts skills of Lara Croft. It’s also likely that the history of Sweden – where an experiment in liberal government was compromised by violence and corruption – resonates with readers in other countries. And the author’s sudden death – although family and fans accept that he was killed by smoking rather than a smoking gun – adds to the sense that the novels contain urgent and dangerous truths.
‘And yet perhaps the books’ triumph should not have been so great a surprise. It is an oddity of Swedish culture that a country often easily ignored suddenly throws up an example in a certain field – Abba, Björn Borg, Volvo – which proves to be a world-beater. Larsson is the latest example.
‘The sadness is that the question which always underlies a reader’s relationship with a favoured author – what will they write next? – cannot apply here, although suggestions that Larsson’s laptop may have contained outlines and notes for many more books are one possible reason why his estate has been so bitterly contested.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: YRSA SIGURDARDÓTTIR
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir is the Icelandic author of the Thora series. With her knowledge of both the Nordic countries and the UK, how different does she feel the response has been to the Larsson phenomenon in the two countries? She says: ‘The success was probably more readily achieved in Scandinavia, Sweden particularly, as these countries are Larsson’s home base in the case of Sweden, and his backyard with regards to the others. But it’s a remarkable achievement where the rest of the world is concerned.
‘It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes the Millennium Trilogy so mesmerising… but I believe it has a lot to do with the feeling of unfairness evoked, followed by justice being served, in an often colourful manner.
‘Salander is the quintessential heroine, bent but not broken, a unique fictional character that one cannot help but admire despite her socially irresponsible antics. Her background is tragic and in a more “traditional” novel she would spiral downwards, and most likely come to a heartbreaking end. Instead we are introduced to a spirit that must at times repress the urge to lunge out, biding her time to eke out what she considers the wicked deserve. Her unusual “look” is appealing to me – and I can gauge my drinking with the recurring notion that it would be a great idea to have my nose pierced with a ring in the middle like a bull, telling me it is time to stop. It does show that somewhere deep inside me I have a fascination and respect for those who have the guts to go ahead with such things…
‘Larsson was not known at all in Iceland before the Millennium books, and possibly this also applies to the other Nordic countries, aside from Sweden. News of fringe politics does not carry over borders.’
And his death?
‘The idea that he was assassinated is not one that has many followers although there are always those that believe in conspiracies. I am really tempted to join their ranks, being a chain-smoking workaholic.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: HÅKAN NESSER
There is no question that Håkan Nesser – who lives both in London and his native Sweden – is comfortably one of the most adroit practitioners of the Nordic crime novel. He’s a man of immense good humour – but possesses a firing-on-all-cylinders readiness to tell it exactly as he sees it: ‘People seem to love Stieg’s books everywhere, but the worldwide enthusiasm may have more to do with the monotheism connected with all kinds of hype. Everybody reads the same books these days, unfortunately – and seems to need to follow this herd instinct.
‘Salander is the key to the success of the Stieg Larsson books, of course. Well, you’ve got a super-smart underdog, beaten by society, but invincible… it’s a formula that’s worked before, hasn’t it? There is no such thing as a Swedish way of writing crime fiction; that can be said with certainty. My writing differs totally from Stieg’s; he’s a political action writer with a lot of pathos, and I like his books very much, but the Swedish crime fiction boom is a market phenomenon, not a stylistic confluence.
‘Before the crime novels, Stieg was known only to those with an eye on the stuff Expo worked with, i.e. neo-Nazis etc. As to his death… well, he died from smoking too much and working too much – there’s absolutely no doubt about that. Other theories are just bullshit journalism.
‘The first film of his books was very well received. The second one had a cooler reception – in fact, I’ve only seen the second one, and I’m afraid it was very bad. Everything was reduced and simplified to action and violence. Can anyone fill his shoes? Frankly, I’m simply not interested. I’m responsible for my own writing, and that’s enough. A Swedish publishing house has been trying to hype a pen-name writer, and perhaps they have succeeded; he was bought by a number of countries at a book fair last April. The problem is that the book is an unbelievable concoction of speculative shit.’
WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: HENRY SUTTON
Henry Sutton, the literary editor of the Daily Mirror, is also an accomplished novelist (his most recent book is Get Me Out of Here), and is working in the area of crime fiction in writing a continuation of R D Wingfield’s Inspector Frost novels. He has a slightly unusual take on the Millennium Trilogy: ‘Actually, it’s in my nature to steer clear of phenomenally popular novels, but one really did have to pay attention in this case. Initially, I have to say, I don’t think the book has been brilliantly published in this country. I don’t think his publishers capitalised on who he was and the fact that the book was already doing supremely well around the world – I think it was a missed trick there. But you can’t argue with the subsequent success of the book. And while we are talking about reservations, I have to say that I did find some of the translations of the books a little clunky – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, for instance.
‘There are othe
r problems with any kind of translated fiction, but I would have thought it was more feasible to render a translation of a popular genre – such as crime fiction – so that it is more in tune with the original. The same might be said of literary fiction as well, but crime fiction has certain common denominators, even the more innovative examples, which can be accessed in a good translation.
‘As for the reasons for the success of books, I’m not sure I agree with the received wisdom that the author’s early death is such a major factor in the acclaim. Actually, his death was a tragedy. The books might even have done better had he been alive – he would have been around to promote them, to talk about them – and there would have been a stronger sense of where these books were coming from. In the final analysis, of course, the author really shouldn’t matter. The books themselves should stand up, without the need to know anything about their creator – and that’s certainly the case with Larsson. It’s something of a modern phenomenon, I think, this need to relate the author to his books. This process of scrutinising and examining the author’s life to illuminate the books – well, I’m not convinced that it’s always particularly helpful.
‘Of course in Larsson’s case, he was a journalist – and a very considerable journalist, at that – and the correlation between his work as a journalist and his fiction can’t be ignored; of course, there are parallels and echoes. There are his concerns: the feminist issues, the socialist issues and his writing on the extreme Right. Knowing all that, it’s hard to disassociate it from the character of Blomkvist in the books – of course, anybody who knows the facts will see the parallels. But this desire to examine the life of the writer – whether it’s J K Rowling, Dan Brown or Ian Rankin – well, I understand the impulse, but I’m not really sure that it’s illuminating. When I write my own novels, I am asked who a particular character is based on, and although all my characters are, I suppose, extrapolations of fragments of my personality, in the final analysis that doesn’t matter – they have to work as discrete entities.
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