In the course of the vast, sprawling, politically charged, sexually graphic, violent epic that is the Millennium trilogy, Larsson (who, as emails to his publisher revealed, painstakingly anatomised and utilised what he perceived as the 'hot button' elements of crime/thriller novels from writers he admired such as Val McDermid, thomas Harris and Sarah Paretsky) allows the reader — whether male or female — a surrogate, the disgraced middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist.