WikiPedia:Plot summary
Middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who publishes the political 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. With few other options, 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 against Wennerström. 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 niece Harriet some 40 years earlier. Vanger admits he is obsessed with finding out the truth of what happened to Harriet, and 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 pressed flower. On his birthday every year since Harriet's murder, Vanger explains, the murderer torments him with a present of a framed pressed flower which is delivered to him from a different country each time.
Blomkvist uproots himself from his life in Stockholm, moving to Hedeby in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record, and begins the process of analyzing 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, Blomkvist becomes acquainted with the members of the extended Vanger family, most of whom resent his presence. He does, however, start a short lived affair with Cecilia Vanger, the niece of Henrik who has been separated from her abusive husband for many years (those in the Vanger family never get divorced it seems).
Meanwhile, Salander is assigned a new legal guardian, Nils Bjurman, a sadist who extorts sexual favors from her in return for giving her money from her own checking and savings accounts (which he, as her guardian, controls). He eventually rapes her, unaware that she had been videotaping his actions. She retaliates a few days later by incapacitating him with a taser, tying him up, forcing him to watch the recording of the tape and threatening to make it public unless he arranges for her to have permanent control over her money. Before she leaves, she tattoos "I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist" in large letters on his torso.
Blomkvist fulfills his contractual obligations by immersing himself in the case. After discovering that Salander has hacked into his computer, he persuades her to assist him with research. Together, they discover entries in Harriet's diary that list the names of missing local women corresponding with Bible verses describing brutal forms of divine retribution; this leads them to suspect that they are on the trail of a serial killer who possibly has an accomplice and has been at large for decades. They eventually become lovers, but Blomkvist has trouble getting close to Salander, a loner who treats virtually everyone she meets with hostility.
Ultimately the two discover that Harriet's brother Martin, now CEO of Vanger Industries, has been raping and murdering women for years, having been "initiated" into serial murder by his late father, Gottfried, who also sexually abused him and Harriet. Blomkvist attempts to confront Martin, who kidnaps him and takes him to a torture chamber hidden in the basement of his house. Martin says that he had planned to kill Harriet eventually, but that she disappeared before he could take any action. As Martin is about to kill Blomkvist, Lisbeth bursts in and attacks Martin with a golf club, rescuing Blomkvist. Lisbeth frees Blomkvist as Martin escapes and flees in his car. She pursues him on her motorcycle to the highway, only to see him kill himself by veering straight into a massive head-on collision with a truck.
Blomkvist and Lisbeth realize that Harriet was not actually murdered, but ran away, with the help of Cecilia's sister Anita, to escape from her brother, who had been sexually abusing her. Using Lisbeth's hacking skills and contacts, they track her to Australia, where she successfully runs a sheep farming company and has grown up children with a man she married while in hiding in Italy, although her husband has now passed away. 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 her uncle and begins to take a leading role in the newly leaderless family business.
Blomkvist reluctantly agrees with Harriet and Henrik that he will not publish any of the evidence he has found on the Vanger family in a journalistic capacity (Martin as a serial killer). This goes against his belief about what the role of a journalist/reporter is and their role in society to challenge and share information and causes him considerable personal contention, such that he cannot face telling his long time confidante Berger about the true story of what he has found. He is persuaded to not share the information by the Vanger family with support from Salander to protect Harriet and on the condition that the family make considerable annual donations to charities which support women from violence.
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, Salander 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.
http://hotfile.com/dl/93612549/5077ec1/DraTat.zip.html
No comments:
Post a Comment