The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an international bestseller by writer and journalist Stieg Larsson. The crime thriller was published in Sweden shortly after his death in 2005 with the original Swedish title, Män som hatar kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women. The book won the 2006 Glass Key Award for best crime novel in its native Sweden, and after the English translation was released it received the 2008 Boeke Prize (South Africa), Crime Thriller of the Year at the 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards, and the 2009 Anthony Award at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was adapted to film twice: a Swedish version, released in 2009, directed by Niels Arden Opley, and a 2011 Hollywood adaptation directed by David Fincher.

The novel is the first installment in the Millennium trilogy and features the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, an ingenious computer hacker with a disregard for convention. Salander lends her talents to help Mikael Blomkvist, a recently disgraced journalist, solve the decades-old mystery of Harriet Vanger’s disappearance and, in the process, restore his credibility. Through the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance, the novel addresses corruption, violence against women, and the institutional failings that perpetuate gender inequality. This guide refers to the 2008 Alfred A. Knopf Kindle edition, translated by Reg Keeland.

Content Warning: The source material features descriptions of sexual assault and torture.

Plot Summary

The novel opens on the day that journalist and corporate watchdog Mikael Blomkvist loses the libel case against him by the corrupt billionaire Hans-Erik Wennerström. Humiliated by the defeat and his credibility damaged, Blomkvist takes a leave of absence from his work at Millennium, the political magazine that he co-owns. As he awaits his 90-day jail term, Erika Berger, Millennium’s other owner and Blomkvist’s occasional lover, takes over the publication.

On the same day of Blomkvist’s verdict, Lisbeth Salander delivers a report to the lawyer Dirch Frode. Frode represents Henrik Vanger, an 82-year-old retired industrialist who has requested a background check on Blomkvist. Salander is the top investigator at Milton Security and an extraordinary researcher with tattoos, piercings, and a penchant for uncovering secrets. She confirms Blomkvist’s clean record but suspects Wennerström may have framed him. She breaks into Wennerström’s apartment building and installs a device that hacks into his computer. When her assignment on Blomkvist ends abruptly, she continues to probe into the Wennerström affair in her spare time.

Content with Blomkvist’s record, Vanger offers him an unusual job. For 37 years, Vanger has been haunted by the 1966 disappearance of his young grandniece, Harriet, and believes that a family member murdered her. He hires Blomkvist to investigate the case under the guise of writing the family’s history. As an incentive, he offers Blomkvist double his payment and irrefutable evidence of Wennerström’s corruption if he uncovers the murderer.

Blomkvist moves from Stockholm to the small island of Hedeby and occupies Vanger’s guesthouse. He pores over boxes of police reports and files concerning Harriet’s disappearance but finds no evidence that suggests a murder. He meets members of the Vanger family who have accepted Harriet’s death as an unknown accident. Harriet’s brother, Martin, diligently heads Vanger Corporation. Cecilia is Harriet’s aunt, a charismatic school principal, who engages in a brief love affair with Blomkvist. Despite the family’s appearance of normalcy, Henrik Vanger confides in Blomkvist about the darker family secrets that include Nazi leadership, eugenics, and domestic abuse. He is convinced that one of his relatives is foul enough to kill Harriet.

As Blomkvist investigates the Vangers, Salander is in Stockholm struggling with the consequences of her past. Since the age of 13, Salander has been under the guardianship of Holger Palmgren, a compassionate advocate for troubled youths. After a traumatic childhood incident, Salander is institutionalized in a psychiatric ward and shuffled through social welfare programs. When she is threatened with mandatory institutionalization as an adult, Palmgren defends her at the district courts. As a compromise, she is declared “legally incompetent,” with Palmgren serving as her guardian. Her legal status never troubles her until Palmgren has a stroke and she is appointed a new guardian, Nils Bjurman, who exploits his position. Bjurman continually rapes her and takes control of her finances. Knowing that her legal status protects Bjurman rather than her, Salander video records his assault and blackmails him into giving her full control of her finances. She orders him to write reports in support of rescinding her incompetence status and tattoos on his abdomen that he is a rapist.

Back in Hedeby, Blomkvist makes several breakthroughs in Harriet’s case. In the photographs taken the day of her disappearance, he recognizes that Harriet had seen someone that upset her—a blurry figure in a jacket with a red patch. Blomkvist also deciphers a set of names, initials, and numbers written in Harriet’s diary that have long puzzled investigators. His daughter, Pernilla, points out that the numbers are citations from the Bible, and Blomkvist learns that Harriet was connected somehow to the murders of five women whose manners of death paralleled the Biblical verses. Blomkvist requests an assistant to help him research the other names, and Frode hires Salander.

Salander discovers more murders that resemble the ones in Harriet’s list and she and Blomkvist formulate a theory that two people committed the serial killings. She moves into Blomkvist’s cabin to continue their research and the two begin a sexual relationship. As they get closer to the truth, they receive anonymous threats. A mutilated cat is left on their porch and Blomkvist is shot at during a jog.

Salander and Blomkvist delve through more photographs in the Vanger Corporation’s archives and finally deduce that Harriet’s father, Gottfried, had been murdering women since 1949. Her brother, Martin, has continued the killings since Gottfried’s death in 1965. When Blomkvist confronts Martin, Martin holds him captive in his basement and beats him while bragging about his crimes. To Blomkvist’s surprise, Martin does not know what happened to Harriet. Salander arrives at the house and rescues Blomkvist, who is near suffocating to death. During his getaway, Martin drives into the path of an oncoming truck and dies. With the details of the serial killings solved, Blomkvist and Salander surmise that Harriet is still alive and that her aunt, Anita Vanger, had helped her flee the country. Blomkvist finds Harriet in Australia, living under the name Anita. Harriet confirms that her father, Gottfried, sexually abused both his children. Harriet then confesses to killing Gottfried, and when Martin continued the assaults on her, she fled Hedeby and changed her identity.

In the final chapters, Harriet reunites with Vanger. To protect Harriet from the media’s exploitation, Blomkvist and Salander agree to cover up their findings. Salander insists that Vanger donate their fee to the victims’ families and women’s crisis centers to atone for their secrecy. Blomkvist, feeling dejected by the compromise, is further depressed when he learns that the promised evidence against Wennerström turns out to be useless. Salander remarks that she has collected her own evidence against the fraudulent financier and gives Blomkvist copies of Wennerström’s hard drive.

Blomkvist publishes an exposé and an accompanying book exposing Wennerström's corruption and returns to Millennium triumphant. In her own heist, Salander siphons $260 million from Wennerström’s bank account. After she tips off one of the many people looking for him, Wennerström is found murdered in Spain. With her financial future secure, Salander restarts her life and acknowledges that she is in love with Blomkvist. Battling her fear of vulnerability, she resolves to tell Blomkvist her feelings. With a Christmas gift in hand, she stops by his apartment and sees him stepping out with his colleague and lover, Erika Berger. She turns away and throws the gift in the trash.