Prologue

• The Case of the Pressed Flowers.

Henrik Vanger receives a dried up, pressed flower on his 82nd
birthday as he has been, for the past 36 years.
 Part 1
1. The court has ruled that Mikael Blomkvist has libeled and defamed financier
Hans-Erik Wennerström.
2. Dirch Frode appears at Milton Security to discuss the report with CEO
Armansky and Lisbeth Salander about Carl Mikael Blomkvist.
3. Blomvist talks to Erika Berger, his lover and the Editor in Chief of Millenium.
She reluctantly agrees that Blomkvist should temporarily leave.
4. Blomkvist gets a call from Frode, who wants set up a meeting with him and
Henrik Vanger, to discuss a possible job.
5.Henrik explains that even though several people saw Harriet at the
Parade and after the accident on the bridge, no one knows why she
never made it to dinner.
6.Henrik wants Blomkvist to find out who murdered Harriet.
7.Erika isn’t happy about Blomkvist living in Hedeby for a year. Lisbeth has
been ordered to drop the investigation on Blomkvist, but she wants to
find out more.
Part 1 Summary

• Henrik Vanger asks journalist Mikael Blomkvist to solve a

case. The case is about which member of the Vanger clan,
murdered Henrik’s grand-niece, Harriet Vanger.
Part 2
8. Henrik gives Mikael a tour of the Vanger estate, and tells him about
his family members.
9. Mikael learns about the history of the Vanger family.
10. Mikael meets Cecelia Vanger, Henrik’s niece. He interrogates the
detective who was initially in charge of Harriet’s case,
Superintendent Detective Morell.
11. Mikael discovers a book in which Harriet had written 2 names and
3 initials alongside a series of numbers. Nils Bjurman rapes Lisbeth
for the first time.
12. Lisbeth cannot report the inappropriate behaviour of Bjurman as
no one would believe her, being under someone else’s
guardianship.
13. Lisbeth plots how to get back at Bjurman. Bjurman rapes Lisbeth
for a second time.
14. Lisbeth reveals that she had secretly recorded Bjurman raping her
and threatens him.
Part 2 Summary

Mikael gets aquainted with the Vanger family and finds one
clue that could be a clue to who murdered Harriet.
Part 3
15. Mikael has served his time in prison and returns to Hedeby.
16. Mikael finds a picture in which Harriet looks shocked, wheres as the
other people in the photograph look like they’re enjoying
themselves. He finds another picture, showing Cecelia Vanger
in Harriet’s window.
17. Mikael is visited by his daughter, Pernilla. While leaving, she tells
him to dive deeper into the ‘quotes on the wall’, which makes him
that the numbers against the names are Bible verses, depicting
gruesome ways of killing. Henrik has a heart attack and is admitted
to the hospital. Mikael asks for a research assistant, so Frode calls
in Lisbeth.
18. Lisbeth starts helping out with the case. While Mikael is in
Stockholm at the Millennium office, someone breaks into his
cottage.
19. Martin tries to get information out of Mikael. Lisbeth finds out
about the murders of the women Harriet had noted in her book.
20. Lisbeth finds more victims similar to the earlier ones. She and
Mikael deduct that Harriet was interested in the murders because
they were in some way connected to the Vanger family.
21. Mikael and Lisbeth find out that in the picture where Harriet looks
shocked, she was staring at a man.
22. While out on a walk, someone tries to shoot Mikael. He visits
Cecelia and asks her about the photograph, but she denies that
it’s her in Harriet’s window.
23. Mikael goes through pictures Henrik took, and discovers that
Cecelia and her sister Anita, all look alike. He realizes that it was
Anita in Harriet’s window.
Lisbeth finds that Gotfried, Harriet and Martin’s father, was involved
in the murders before 1965, and Mikael finds that Harriet’s shocked
face in the photograph was a response to seeing Martin. He realises
that Martin murdered some of the women.
Part 3 Summary
Mikael finds important clues. He learns that the numbers against the
names and initials are bible verses that explain how these women died.
Both, Mikael and Lisbeth learn that Gotfried Vanger and Martin were
behind the murders. Mikael goes to Martin’s house, and Martin takes
Him in as hostage.
Part 4
24. Gotfried would teach Martin how to rape and murder women.
Martin actually doesn’t know what happened to Harriet.
Martin physically tortures Mikael, but Lisbeth arrives to save him.
Martin leaves in his car, and he crashes into a truck and dies.
25. As Mikael recovers, Lisbeth tells Frode that she wants herself and
Mikael to be left out of the police reports. They go to London to visit
Anita, and tap her telephone. Soon after leaving Anita’s, Anita makes a
call to some in Australia. Since Lisbeth gets a call regarding her
mother’s death, Mikael leaves for Australia alone.
26. Mikael goes to a sheep farm in Queensland, owned by an
Anita Cochran, and greets her as Harriet. He lets her in on
everything that’s been going on and she in turn tells him about
what she’d uncovered in Hedeby and reveals that she had
accidentally killed her father.
27. Harriet and Henrik reunite. Mikael gets to know that Henrik has
asked him not to publish anything about the story of Harriet.
Lisbeth reveals that she has proof that Wennerström is a gangster.
28. Janne Dahlman is working for Wennerström. So Mikael calls a
meeting in order to discuss putting on a show for Dahlman to
report back to Wennerström. Mikael leaves for his cabin to work
on a manuscript. Harriet joins the Millennium board.
29. Lisbeth goes to Zurich in disguise and empties out Wennerström’s
secret bank accounts.
Harriet is revealed to be alive and reunites with the family.
Mikael works on bringing down Wennerström, this time
With the help of Lisbeth’s hacking skills.
Epilogue
Mikael publishes his work and outs Wennerström, with proof, with the
help of Lisbeth’s findings. Wennerström fled Sweden, and six months
later was found dead in Spain.
Harriet is getting ready to take charge of the Vanger Corporation.
Major Characters
• Mikael Blomkvist: A journalist, publisher of the political magazine
Millennium, and the protagonist of the novel. He is ethical, earnest,
and a little naïve, and accepts a freelance job to solve the mystery of
Harriet Vanger’s disappearance in order to restore his good name
after a libel conviction threatens his journalistic career and the future
of his magazine.
• Lisbeth Salander: She is also a protagonist of the novel and the titular
girl with the dragon tattoo. She is emotionally withdrawn, Salander is
also fearless and a prodigiously skilled hacker, making her an ideal
partner for Blomkvist in his investigation into the Vanger family.
• Henrik Vanger: A wealthy industrialist and head of the Vanger
companies. He devotes most of his life to uncovering the cause of
Harriet’s death and appears to hold his family, which he apparently
despises, responsible for her fate.
• Martin Vanger: The second of two serial killers in the novel, Henrik’s
great-nephew, and one of the primary antagonists. Despite his
position as acting head of the Vanger companies and a seemingly
benevolent demeanor, Martin hides a sadistic streak: in the tradition
of his father before him he seeks out women to kidnap, rape, and
murder.
• Harriet is the mostly unseen star of the chief mystery of The Girl With
the Dragon Tattoo. For most of the novel, the other characters think
she's long-dead. Blomkvist is skeptical at first, but when he sees that
she has researched into her father and brother beings was a serial
killers, he believes it too.
 Themes
• Violence Against Women
This theme manifests most graphically in Chapters 11 and 13, when the
court guardian Nils Bjurman forces Salander to perform a sexual act in
exchange for access to her finances.
The theme of violence against women also recurs in the serial murders of
Martin and Gottfried Vanger, who justify their killings of women with
Biblical allusions. In this case, the men explain their acts via the notion
that women are inherently filthy and unworthy and that their natures
make them vile. The Bible verses referred to in the novel portray women
as sexual deviants in need of punishment and correction nd then brutally
rapes her.
• The Corruption of Sweden
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo depicts a Sweden in which corruption of
various forms is widespread. The character of Hans-Erik Wennerström
best personifies the corruption in business and the economic sector in
the novel. Wennerström functions not only as a major player in the
financial sector but also as an international financier who balances
enormous debts with private offshore accounts.
Corruption also appears in the form of Nils Bjurman, who acts as Lisbeth
Salander’s guardian. As Lisbeth’s guardian, he is entrusted with taking
care of her, almost like a surrogate father, but he violates the trust of the
court and Lisbeth by using his position to gain sexual favors.
• The Inaccuracy of Appearances
In many of the novel’s characters, we see a discrepancy between the way they
appear to the world, which includes how they present themselves, and the way
they actually are, suggesting that appearances are not an accurate
representation of a person. Salander, for example, has a very distinct
appearance, including not just her tattoos and clothing choices, but also her
personality. She is laconic and withdrawn to the point that she is judged by
others to be incompetent. In reality, however, she is extraordinarily intelligent
and very capable,
Martin Vanger is in many ways Salander’s opposite. He appears quite normal
and banal, and in all his interactions with other characters he is very polite and
good-natured. Yet he turns out to be a sadistic rapist and serial killer.