Monday, January 9, 2012

The murk around Stieg Larsson's death



A self-described feminist, anti-white supremacist, anti-neo-Nazi--he died on November 9, 2004 which is the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Is it believable the Sweden's most public anti-Nazi would die of natural causes on such a date? He was 50. Larsson ran the magazine Expo which to say the least was a bother to the extreme right. A fact which he parodies is his Millennium trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest). He was set to publish ten books in the series, a series that was a sort of exposé on various murky elements of Swedish society.

Sweden is no land of green, meditative vegetarians as is often thought by those not familiar with the country. A former Prime Minister was murdered in the '90s (still unsolved) and a Foreign Minister was murdered in 2003 (the verdict of which does not rest easy with many). The first of Larsson's books focus on corporate corruption, the second on the sex trade, the third on the trilogy's compelling protagonist Lisbeth Salander's liberation from dependence on the state. Christopher Hitchens wrote in a 2009 article for Vanity Fair (The Author Who Played With Fire) of a source who had "excellent contacts" in the Swedish police and security world who assured him that everything that took place in the "Millennium" novels actually took place. So, as Hitchens himself said, you can see how many people believe he may not have actually died of naturally causes but was "stopped."

Officially, Larsson died of coronary thrombosis, so any murder that could have taken place would have to have been done in-house, so to speak, or at the hospital.

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