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in the 1980s, he then became a professional boxer and in 1987 played the lead in a film loosely dramatizing his early life: Staffan Hildebrand’s Stockholmsnatt (Stockholm Night or The King of Kungsan), an important cult film in Sweden. Today Paolo Roberto has a cooking show on television—and his Italian aunts don’t hesitate to grab a spoon out of his hands when he isn’t stirring tomato sauce the right way! Stieg was especially impressed by Roberto’s frankness, and his unpredictability. He can be totally macho one minute and then suddenly begin championing equality between the sexes. During the 2002 elections, he almost got into Parliament, but came in second. On the other hand, he did make it into The Millennium Trilogy.

THE PSYCHIATRIST Svante Branden, who helps Lisbeth Salander defend herself against Dr. Peter Teleborian in the third volume, is one of our old friends. I’ve already mentioned that I sublet his student room when I arrived in Stockholm in 1977, before Stieg had found his job with the postal service and come to join me. Like us, Svante Branden has always been against all forms of discrimination and abuse. As a psychiatrist, he’s particularly skilled at perceiving people’s real motives behind whatever smoke screen of excuses they may make. Stieg wanted to pay homage to him by casting him as an “ordinary hero” in daily life. After Stieg’s death, however, and the behavior of his father and brother regarding the moral, intellectual, and material legacy of my partner (about which I’ll have more to say later), Svante no longer felt honored to be in the trilogy. And he wrote to the Larssons to tell them why.

As a specialist in legal psychiatry, I firmly wish my name to be associated with justice and morality. That Stieg should want to borrow my name for his book was an honor for me. But after his death, you, Joakim, are profiting from Stieg’s work and you are using my name without my authorization. Although your strange—to say the least—statements to the press about Stieg and Eva are no doubt protected by law, they smack of a morality fit for a profiteer and a corrupt accountant. For this reason I require that you remove my name from Stieg’s book immediately and that you pay me damages for having profited from my name and professional standing.

Given that Stieg wished to see my name in his book, my demands are modest: a lump sum of 32 kronor. In addition, I will ask for 1 krona* per year until you come to some agreement with Eva. As of today, the sum owed comes to 36 kronor. You may transfer the money to my account at Handelsbanken.

The Larssons sent their answer directly to the editors of Uppdrag Granskning (Mission: Investigation), a serious television program on investigative journalism, who published it on their website. Svante then allowed the editors to publish his own letter on the website of Swedish National Television. In the Larssons’ letter, Stieg’s brother proposed sarcastically that Svante might be of some psychiatric help to me—and offered to donate all damages asked to charity….

IN STIEG’S manuscript, Anders Jakobsson is the doctor who admits Lisbeth Salander to the emergency room of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg at the beginning of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. He operates, removes the bullet lodged in her brain, and saves her life. All through her hospitalization, which lasts for dozens and dozens of pages, he helps her. He talks to her, listens to her, sneaks her Palm Tungsten T3 personal digital assistant to her, and so forth. Anders had been a friend to Stieg and me ever since the Umea years of the 1970s. In 2006, at Eastertime—after Stieg had died and his father and brother had begun to stop considering me Stieg’s legitimate widow—Anders ran into Erland in a small supermarket in Umea and did not conceal his opinion about the matter. After that incident, the Larssons had Norstedts Forlag, the publishers of the trilogy, change “Anders Jakobsson” to “Anders Jonasson” in the third book of the trilogy! This story was confirmed by Norstedts and the Larssons on camera