The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (34 page)

‘The plots are convoluted, but one sticks with them, and Blomkvist is of course a sympathetic character; Lisbeth doesn’t really come fully into her own until the second and third books. But what really struck me about
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
was the fact that the book is rather English in aspect! The unravelling of a mystery which took place 40 years ago is a kind of tip of the hat to the classic English mystery, with a central character a journalist/detective. He’s out of work, under a cloud – actually, rather an English figure in terms of the genre. This was all of a part with my speculating as to why the English have responded so much to the books (I didn’t get round to the Americans and Europeans in my considerations). I think it’s true that – as Henning Mankell and others have proved – Sweden as a country is close in atmosphere and feeling to England (and, indeed, Scotland). It struck me forcibly when reading the early Henning Mankells – and it’s a feeling that persisted with Stieg Larsson – that one is really reading about a version of Norfolk; the slate-grey skies, and the attitude of the people. Scandinavian crime fiction is both similar and dissimilar to English crime fiction. This might explain why the hot-blooded Mediterranean writers – Andrea Camilleri, for instance – are less popular; the English are not temperamentally suited to those books in the way that they are to writers from the Nordic countries. I’ve enthused endlessly to people about how good the Italians are, but the response is often less than enthusiastic – and publishers such as Bitter Lemon who specialise in (among other things) Italian crime in translation have to make something of an effort to sell their books to English readers.

‘Blomkvist one can see appealing to the English reader,’ continues Berlins, ‘But Salander is a very different kettle of fish, and my search within myself as to the reason for her popularity produced some interesting results. For a start, she is very different from anything that English readers are accustomed to. As a rule of thumb, it might be said that English crime readers – at least the readers of such novelists as P D James and Ruth Rendell – are conservative in their tastes (that is, of course, conservative with a small ‘c’). ‘With writers such as James and Rendell, the books are essentially about the status quo – or, at least, about re-establishing the status quo. Bitter endings are not particularly popular with English readers. So it is possible to say that it is the old-fashioned style which still sells best – so why have English readers taken to Lisbeth with such enthusiasm? She’s not what we’re used to…

‘But as to listing the demerits of Stieg Larsson – well, what about the villains? They are, largely speaking, one-dimensional – look at the Russian heavies. In fact, this leads to what I consider to be the real reason for the success: the books have a certain comic strip element – Lisbeth, for instance, is not a real figure if you look at her objectively – but it is this energy which is obviously immensely appealing to readers. It’s a clever move by Larsson to make Blomkvist a believable figure by contrast, which he certainly does – that has the effect of anchoring the narrative in a kind of reality, so that readers are prepared to take on board the more outlandish elements. So my feeling was that English readers, rather than wanting to be convinced of the reality of the character – or, for that matter, pacified by her or the narrative, as much crime fiction does – were happy to embrace Lisbeth on this non-naturalistic, larger-than-life stage.

‘Having said that, most of the women I have spoken to about Salander don’t actually like her, but perhaps, to some degree she acts out female readers’ fantasies on some level.

‘In the final analysis, whatever flaws critics like myself might identify in a writer, it’s really an academic exercise, when readers decide to vote with their wallets and embrace books the way they have done with Larsson. English readers were not, for instance, put off by the socialist hero at the heart of the
Millennium Trilogy.

‘Larsson is, of course, critic-proof – rather like Dan Brown. I’m not saying that Brown is the same kind of writer as Larsson – the latter is, of course, infinitely better. But the general disapproval of Dan Brown in critical circles hasn’t dented his sales one iota. Larsson, for a complicated series of almost unexplainable reasons, has touched a nerve with crime fiction readers. That is why he has broken (and is continuing to break) sales records in the genre.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: MARTIN EDWARDS

The English Lake District is the stamping ground for Martin Edwards, who wrote such Ullswater-set mysteries as
The Serpent Pool
, and he told me that he regarded the first Larsson book as ‘an extraordinary achievement by any standards – all the more impressive because it was Larsson’s first published novel’. ‘As with any debut, there are flaws,’ he went on, ‘but there is an abundance of riches to compensate. And one of the pleasures of the books that await detective story fans is Larsson’s occasional appreciative nods to the genre. He draws on its variety in composing his story line, and setting the tone of the narrative.

‘The first book boasts a family tree of the Vangers, and I agree with Larsson’s translator, Reg Keeland, that it’s a pity that maps of Hedeby Island which make it easier to follow details of the plot were not included. Family trees and maps were a staple of Golden Age detective fiction between the wars, and it’s fascinating to see a thoroughly modern writer such as Larsson using traditional devices to add texture to his story. More than that, the central mystery of the disappearance of Harriet Vanger is presented as an example of a classic form of detective puzzle:

“I assume that something happened to Harriet here on the island,” Blomkvist said, “and that the list of suspects consists of the finite number of people trapped here. A sort of locked-room mystery in island format?” Vanger smiled ironically.”

‘In fact, the setup of the story is really that of a “closed circle” mystery, rather than a type of “locked-room” or “impossible crime”; John Dickson Carr was a notable exponent of the latter form. But this is a quibble; what is so intriguing is that a ground-breaking book so consciously draws upon past fictions, whilst portraying the failings of modern society with unflinching realism.

‘The ironic exchange between Blomkvist and Vanger is playful, but subtler than, say, the passage in Carr’s classic mystery
The Hollow Man
, in which Dr Gideon Fell remarks in The Locked-Room Lecture: “We’re in a detective story, and we don’t fool the reader by pretending we’re not. Let’s not invent elaborate excuses to drag in a discussion of detective stories. Let’s candidly glory in the noblest pursuits possible to characters in a book.”

‘As the story of Harriet Vanger’s fate darkens, so do the fictional references. At risk of going “stir-crazy” in Hedeby, Blomkvist borrows two whodunits by Elizabeth George from the library. Looking around in Gottfried’s cabin, he finds more murder mysteries, some by Mickey Spillane. Later, on Midsummer Eve, he tries to unwind by embarking on Val McDermid’s
The Mermaids Singing
. When, a few days later, he reaches the denouement, we are told:
“It was grisly.”

‘So, economically, the mood is set. Larsson’s reference to McDermid’s story of serial murder is not pointless padding. The shocking crimes that he is about to uncover are very grisly indeed.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: RUSSELL JAMES

After ten crime novels, Russell James wrote
Great British Fictional Detectives
and its companion
Great British Fictional Villains
. He takes a characteristically dispassionate view of Larsson: ‘After an author shoots to fame it can be that people talk more about who the author is and why they are famous than about the books they wrote. So far it hasn’t been that way with Larsson – perhaps because he wrote just three books, and we can get a handle on three books; there isn’t a lifetime of writing for us to plough through.

‘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.