Thriller writer's poisoned legacy

The novels have all the nostalgic, seedy components of Hollywood film noir: chain-smoking sleuths, underworld contacts, endless cups of coffee and a smattering of casual sex.

Except that an effective Hollywood version of Stieg Larsson's Swedish trilogy of international bestsellers would have to capitalise instead on what has really made these detective tales fly off the shelves: their essential modernity.

Forget trailing suspects down dark alleys in a dirty trench coat. Larsson's plots pivot on the latest developments in computer hacking and on the ferociously untamed character of a neo-punk heroine called Lisbeth Salander, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo of the first novel.

It is an original formula that film producers are competing for the chance to replicate on screen.

As the second Salander book in a series formally known as the Millennium Trilogy comes out in America, and in a paperback edition in Britain (it came out in New Zealand earlier this year), the appetite for an English-language film adaptation is intense.

Word that George Clooney, Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt are all interested in playing the central role of the idealistic journalist Mikael Blomkvist has been followed by suggestions that producer Soren Staermose, the Dane who holds screen rights to the books, has been approached by directors including Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott and Martin Scorsese.

Tourism to Sodermalm, the area of Stockholm where Salander is supposed to live, has been boosted by the Millennium effect, and the books have sold more than 12 million copies around the world.

So the potential cinema audience is huge. It is a question of finding the right package, but the late Larsson's work is proving hard to handle.

According to Sonny Mehta, editor-in-chief of Knopf, Larsson's American publisher, a Hollywood version is on the way. "I'm certain that in the months to come people will be reading news about Stieg Larsson in Variety," he said last month.

No deal has yet been closed, but cinema distributors in the United States and Britain remain reluctant to bring over a low-budget, Swedish film of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo that already exists.

In parts of Europe this film has pushed the second Dan Brown film, Angels and Demons, off the top of the box-office chart. But why squander the chance to make really big money by screening a subtitled version before the book receives the full treatment from a top studio?

Mehta says he came across Larsson's work at the Frankfurt Book Fair when a friend recommended the first book.

"She said it was one of the best thrillers she'd read in a long time. In no way, however, did her enthusiasm prepare me for the singular experience of the novel itself." Mehta adds, as well he might, that the books get better as the series goes on, and is quite open about the process by which the title went global.

He placed influential "mystery blogs" online, but found he was pushing at an open door. Larsson's Scandinavian fans were already telling English readers to look out for the book.

There are still two persistent obstacles in the path of those marketing Larsson's output. The first is the deeply Nordic nature of the books, a problem evident in the trilogy's clunky English titles; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. In Sweden and much of Europe the first book, along with the Swedish film version, is known as The Man Who Hates Women.

If Hollywood starts playing with the titles again, or even with the location, they are in danger of confusing the fan base.

The second problem, the real difficulty, is that Larsson died suddenly at the age of 50 before he could taste the fruits of his literary success.

A journalist who was known in Britain for his work on Searchlight, the anti-fascist and anti-racist magazine, he began his own investigative magazine, Expo, which is still going strong in Sweden.

The rest of the Larsson legacy is in serious dispute. His family inherited all the rights to his work on his death in 2004, while his long-term partner Eva Gabrielsson still lives in their old apartment, battling to regain control of Larsson's work.

An architectural historian who supported Larsson in the early impoverished phase of his campaigning career, Gabrielsson lived with him for 30 years.

They deliberately kept their bank accounts and personal paperwork separate, she has explained, because Larsson was worried that the many enemies he made through his crusading journalism would try to take revenge on him through her.

As a result, there was no proof of their life together and Gabrielsson has made a legal bid for some of the millions his books have made.

"I think it's a great injustice," she has said. "It would have been beyond Stieg's worst nightmares to know that someone other than me was handling the rights to his books and to know that the money we planned to invest is gone. My lawyer has been trying to get an agreement with [the family] that would give me the literary rights, but they have never been in favour of that."

The case has divided Sweden and beyond, with the birth of online "Support Eva" protests across the globe.

Her defenders are calling for a change in Swedish law allowing common-law spouses to inherit in cases such as this, where the dead partner has left no will. The row has made the handling of the books and of any future films even more controversial among devotees of the trilogy.

But Gabrielsson appears to have one rather strong piece of leverage. In a development uncannily like something from the pages of Larsson's own work, she claims she holds a laptop which contains the 200-page draft manuscript of a fourth Salander mystery: a property now worth millions.

Larsson's father and brother also inherited half of the couple's Stockholm flat and in 2005 they offered to exchange their half for Larsson's laptop.

"My legal adviser called it extortion," Gabrielsson has said since. "I refused to hand over the computer."

One rumour among Larsson fans hints that the laptop contains plots for another six books, while another suggests that Gabrielsson, who helped with research on the first three books, might have decided to finish her dead partner's work.

"It would be as difficult as trying to finish a painting by Picasso," she has said, adding that the only book she was writing concerned events since the death of Larsson, who had a heart attack after walking up seven flights of stairs to his office when the lift was out of order.

Salander and her trusty sidekick, Blomkvist, were born out of a rich seam of Nordic crime writing which is winning increasing readership.
First came the Martin Beck thrillers from the Swedish husband and wife team Sjowall and Wahloo, then came the acclaimed Wallander series from Henning Mankell. Last year Mankell's bestselling books became the basis for a successful BBC television series, starring Kenneth Branagh, and the first new Wallander book in 10 years, The Troubled Man, has been secured for publication in Britain by Harvill Secker.

But if the tradition of Swedish crime fiction was established, Larsson stepped out from the ranks when he created Salander, the pierced, tattooed misfit with violent and bisexual proclivities who has won readers' hearts. The author cited the influence of Pippi Longstocking, but some might also detect the shadow of Danish writer Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla, heroine of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, with her unorthodox habits and her upfront sexuality.

If Larsson's fertile imagination is eventually harnessed for cinema audiences, then there will always be the mystery of his own death to solve. Christopher MacLehose, the British publisher who took up the first book with Quercus, is still consumed with sorrow and rage at the early loss of such a prodigious talent.

"He smoked over 60 cigarettes a day and was a classic workaholic," MacLehose said. "To say he didn't give his body a chance almost understates the case. And like many driven men, he tended not to listen to the counsel of those around him - he was warned again and again that he should look after himself."

For the conspiracy theorists that form an unusually large constituency among Larsson's fans, the idea persists that the author was murdered and his killer, perhaps someone who sabotaged his lift that day, was one of his many professional foes. But it would probably take a real life Lisbeth Salander to prove it. Until then the author's death has been put down to those film noir accessories: cigarettes and coffee.

- Observer

* Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, starts screening on Sky's UKTV on Monday at 8.30pm.