Lisbeth Salander can be viciously violent. Mikael Blomkvist knows it ­- and owes his life to it. When a criminologist and a journalist who works with Blomkvist at Millennium magazine are killed on the brink of publishing a brutal exposé of human trafficking, the evidence points in one direction.

Salander's prints are on the murder weapon. But Blomkvist knows Lisbeth would never act without reason, and he cannot find one here. The victims were his friends.

But so is Salander. Something much more dangerous is surely at play . .