The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Plot

Middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm, has lost a libel case involving damaging allegations about billionaire Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, and is sentenced to three months in prison. Facing jail time and professional disgrace, Blomkvist steps down from his position on the magazine's board of directors, despite strong objections from Erika Berger, Blomkvist's longtime friend, occasional lover, and business partner. At the same time, he is offered an unlikely freelance assignment by Henrik Vanger, the elderly former CEO of Vanger Enterprises. Blomkvist accepts the assignment — unaware that Vanger commissioned a comprehensive investigation into Blomkvist's personal and professional history, carried out by gifted private investigator Lisbeth Salander.

Blomkvist visits Vanger at his estate on the tiny island of Hedeby, several hours from Stockholm. The old man draws Blomkvist in by promising not only financial reward for the assignment, but also solid evidence that Wennerström is truly the scoundrel Blomkvist suspects him to be. On this basis, Blomkvist agrees to spend a year writing the Vanger family history as a cover for the real assignment: solving the "cold case" of the disappearance of Vanger's great niece Harriet some 40 years earlier. Vanger expresses his suspicion that Harriet was murdered by a member of the vast Vanger family, many of whom were present in Hedeby on the day of her disappearance. Each year on his birthday Harriet gave Henrik a present of pressed flowers. On his birthday every year since Harriet's murder, Vanger explains, the murderer torments him with a present of pressed flowers.

Blomkvist begins the process of analysing the more than 40 years' worth of information Henrik Vanger has obsessively compiled around the circumstances of the day Harriet disappeared. Hedeby is home to several generations of Vangers, all part owners in Vanger Enterprises. Under the pretext of researching the family history, and due to the small size of the island, Blomkvist soon becomes acquainted with the members of the extended Vanger family who are variously mad, uninterested, concerned, hostile, or aloof.

Blomkvist immerses himself in the case. Eventually Lisbeth Salander is also brought in, now to assist him with research using her skills as a computer hacker. Ultimately the two discover that Harriet's brother Martin, now CEO of Vanger Industries, has been systematically abusing and killing women for years. Moreover, the behavior was indoctrinated in him by his late father Gottfried who sexually abused Martin and Harriet as well. Blomkvist attempts to confront Martin, but is captured and taken to a torture chamber hidden in Martin's house. He also reveals that he is not responsible for Harriet's disappearance and presumed murder. Moments before Martin can kill Blomkvist, Lisbeth bursts in and attacks, rescuing him. Martin escapes while Lisbeth frees Blomkvist, only to commit suicide by crashing his car into a truck on the highway.

Blomkvist and Lisbeth realize that Harriet was not actually murdered, but ran away to escape from her sadistic brother. They track her to Australia where she runs a sheep farming company. Confronted, she confirms their account of the case, but also reveals that she was actually responsible for the presumed accidental death of her father. She returns to Sweden where she is happily reunited with Vanger and begins to take a leading role in the newly leaderless family company.

Vanger's promises of evidence regarding Wennerström prove to have been mostly a lure for Blomkvist and are not especially substantial. However, using her investigative skills, Lisbeth breaks into Wennerström's computer and discovers that his crimes go beyond even what Blomkvist was convicted of libel for printing. Using the evidence she found, Blomkvist prints an exposé article and book which destroys Wennerström and catapults him and Millennium to national prominence.


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