My Aspergirl: Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and Visualizations

Abstract

Despite occasional lapses into dry journalistic reportage, Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (2005-07)-The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Girl Who Played with Fire, Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest-captivates global readership through exciting sleuthing against State and individual crimes in search of gender justice. Part of Nordic practiced by the likes of Henning Mankell,1 or Ikea Noir Brooks Riley notes, this trilogy of detective thrillers revolves around the liberal, middle-aged investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, doubling the relentless detective and the tenderloving hero irresistible to women. Blomkvist is assisted-ultimately guided and saved-by Lisbeth Salander, a troubled young woman with Asperger's Syndrome, an Aspergirl, in Rudy Simone's coinage.2 Salander is the true reason for Larsson's literary success, for she manages to become every reader's darling Aspergirl.Inherent in this genre is the uncovering of Whodunit, shedding light on what heretofore has been veiled. perfect symbol of the trilogy's relentless search for truth and justice is the prologue's suspense over pressed flowers sent to a bereaved industrialist Henrik Vanger for forty-four years after the disappearance of his beloved niece Harriet. Desiccated, deprived of the lifeblood of water, these dead flowers somehow preserve their beauty forever, like memories and desires over loved ones. Hence, with Salander's help, Blomkvist first exposes an unscrupulous businessman, Wennerstrom. When the mysterious Salander is accused of double homicides, Blomkvist defends her and uncovers State transgressions against Salander. Throughout the trilogy, revelations or visualizations of what lies behind criminal activities energize this detective fiction and crime thriller. Invited by Henrik Vanger to investigate Harriet's four-decade-old cold case, Bloomkvist follows the trail of evidence, particularly photographs of Children's Day parade, after which Harriet vanished, to envision the key to mystery. Although detection is a process of logical ratiocination, the final illumination strikes unexpectedly and intuitively. Examining the local newspaper's photographs that capture the last few hours of a missing person, Blomkvist responds:a flitted through his head, he were reacting to something he had just seen. It was an invisible creature had whispered in his ear, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end ... He felt a fresh excitement, and over the years Blomkvist has learned to trust his instincts. These instincts were reacting to something in the album, but he could not yet say what was. (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 307)Perceiving some vague pattern in chaos, something out of nothing, aptly describes the subconscious genesis of any creative process: ideas made words, words made flesh, or celluloid images, which circle back to abstraction and ideas. That thought remains hidden and has to be cast in similes beginning with as though twice, spelling out the roadblock to an intuitive grasp.Blomkvist continues this pattern of saw something. I don't know what was yet. It was something that almost became an idea, but I missed it (316). Still unexplained, gradually taking shape though, Larsson is of course creating a page-turner full of suspense. anticipation culminates in a Zen-like sudden illumination when The insight struck him like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky (323). Blomkvist at long last sees what is hiding in plain sight to the police and the bereaved uncle for over forty years. In the series of photographs capturing Harriet and her friends enjoying the parade, Harriet at some point looked away from the parade and became so visibly frightened that she recoiled physically. We later find out that Harriet saw the return of her brother Martin, her tormentor and the future serial killer of women.At the heart of detective genre, visualizations hinge much on logical, rational analysis on intuition. …