Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [45]
It is no exaggeration to say that this incident developed into a trauma for Stieg. He could never understand how he could have misjudged one of his closest colleagues so fundamentally. Never before had his strict principle been challenged in such a flagrant way – the motto that dictated everything else in his life: Respect everybody, regardless of their skin colour, gender, language, religion, ethnic background or sexual orientation. Always. In all circumstances. Unconditionally.
I am quite certain that this researcher is linked with Lisbeth Salander’s abilities. How do I know? The answer is obvious if one goes back several years. The researcher was forced to leave Expo in 1997. As I already mentioned, that was the year when Stieg wrote his first chapter about Lisbeth Salander. Stieg dealt with his sorrow and disappointment by creating a character similar to the researcher. I think my friend wanted to salve his own wounds by doing something that is not all that unusual: allowing a person to cause damage in the imagination rather than in the real world. One summer’s day in 2009 I bumped into the researcher from Expo. I shall never forget the first thing he said: “Stieg got his revenge in his own way. I am Lisbeth Salander as far as her computer expertise is concerned. And we are both slender and don’t weigh enough! But I shall always love Stieg. It’s an honour to be a model for Salander.”
Quite early on in his time at T.T. Stieg was made the new agency’s crime-fiction specialist. This wasn’t especially surprising. He had read practically everything that had been written in that genre for the past two hundred years. But he didn’t write much about it for T.T. Their archive contains three of his articles on the subject of crime novels for summer reading, two on crime novels to read at Christmas and two other similar pieces. Most of these recommend recently published books.
The list of titles makes it easy to see where Stieg got his inspiration. Names that keep cropping up include Erskine Childers, Norman Mailer, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, James Ellroy, John Buchan, John le Carré, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Peter Høeg and Mark Frost. What is most obvious is that he preferred several female crime writers. His favourites were Minette Walters, Patricia Cornwell, Liza Cody, Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Dorothy Sayers and Sara Paretsky.
He also interviewed two authors. The first was the sciencefiction writer Harlan Ellison, whose output included scripts for Alfred Hitchcock films, Batman, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek. Ellison and Stieg certainly had things in common. They both lived under constant threat of being murdered and they both became successful crime writers.
But it is the other interview which is most interesting. In September 1992, Stieg either met or conducted a telephone interview with the crime writer Elizabeth George. It is clear that she was a major source of inspiration for him; among other things he called her the queen of crime writing. It is not difficult to imagine that Stieg’s relationship with the genre would have been very different without books like A Great Deliverance, Payment in Blood, A Suitable Vengeance and Well-Schooled in Murder.
Stieg told me how pleased he was once his work with Norstedts got under way. One reader’s report was written by Lasse Bergström, now retired but formerly in charge of publishing. Bergström described the first volume as an orthodox crime novel with a self-contained mystery, the second as a police thriller and the third as a political thriller.
Stieg replied to Bergström’s comments in an email to his publisher, Eva Gedin:
Please tell Lasse Bergström that he’s obviously an intelligent and sensible person of impeccable taste, and that flattery will get him everywhere. Hmm. I don’t know, but I have the impression that you Norstedts people are seriously