Critics at once celebrated the appearance of and mourned the loss of Stieg Larsson, a muckraking Swedish journalist who penned three brilliant mystery novels before he died in 2004. This is the first of Larsson's Millennium trilogy; published posthumously, it won the Glass Key Award in Scandinavia and the Anthony Award in its English translation. From the opening page, it yanks readers into a cold case mystery steeped in dirty family secrets, of an aging tycoon and the missing grandniece he adored.

"It's like a blast of cold, fresh air.... What separates Stieg Larsson's work from [other Swedish crime fiction] is that it features at its center two unique and fascinating characters: a disgraced financial journalist and the absolutely marvelous 24-year-old Lisbeth Salander—a computer-hacking Pippi Longstocking with pierced eyebrows and a survival instinct that should scare anyone who gets in her way."—Chicago Tribune