True, it wasn’t always easy, but sometimes I even miss that feverish intensity which occasionally bordered on terror — the terror of not being worthy of Stieg Larsson’s legacy.
That concern was what drove me, and it’s safe to say it was Lisbeth Salander who terrified me most. How could I portray such an iconic character without disappointing people? I remember going in too heavy-handed at first. It was as if I wanted to put too much in, so I spent a great many hours cutting and toning things down. The main things I removed were emotions. Sentimentality and melodrama don’t suit Lisbeth.
Her feelings should merely be glimpsed between the lines, and I realised she’s at her best in action, when she’s fighting as the underdog. If I could just find the right scenes, she’d come to life. But there was still one problem that took me a long time to figure out: how does Lisbeth Salander remember?
You know, it’s not just Lisbeth’s personality that makes her such an amazing character. Just like Batman or Superman or any other great superhero, she’s got her own mythology which is a crucial element of her explosive force. I realised early on I wanted to show that and develop it. So I needed to go back to her childhood, when her malevolent father, Alexander Zalachenko, abused and raped her mother, and Lisbeth vowed to take revenge. But I realised I would kill off some of the mystique if I had her recall those incidents herself. The chain of events seemed stronger if they were seen from outside, with just hints of her rage and pain.
It felt like I needed a filter. I also noticed that Stieg Larsson had wrestled with this issue himself: he almost always has the old lawyer Holger Palmgren, Lisbeth’s former guardian, recount her childhood. Of course, that’s a classic trick. Mythologised genius figures in literature are often best observed from a certain distance. You need a Dr Watson to create the myth and maintain the mystery around its power. From the protagonist’s point of view, most things are just logical and self-evident, but when the same process is observed by someone else, it helps us understand what’s so remarkable about it. It helps us to feel amazed. I decided to use the same devices as Stieg Larsson. And yet I refused to surrender completely.
I carried on delving into Lisbeth Salander’s thoughts and memories, testing the limits. It’s no exaggeration to say that was the process that enabled me to suss her out and then one evening, a brilliantly clear, marvellous evening, to discover her big secret.
After that day it was as if she wrote herself. I started to comprehend why she had to strike back once again — hard, without pity. I realised how the story had to continue, and I miss it already. I hope you enjoy reading it!
David Lagercrantz, Stockholm, 15 May, 2015
Translated from the Swedish by Ruth Urbom
Author’s acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to my agent Magdalena Hedlund, Stieg Larsson’s father and brother Erland and Joakim Larsson, my Swedish publishers Eva Gedin and Susanna Romanus, my editor Ingemar Karlsson, and Linda Altrov Berg and Catherine Mörk at Norstedt’s Agency.
I also owe thanks to David Jacoby, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, and Andreas Strömbergsson, Professor of Mathematics at Uppsala University, as well as to Fredrik Laurin, digger-in-chief at Ekot, Mikael Lagström, V.P. services at Outpost 24, the authors Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, and Menachem Harari.
And of course to my Anne.