The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin

by Jan Stocklassa

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Snickarbacken [Carpenters Hill]

SNICKARBACKEN

the monthly meeting that was the new CEO’s idea—to “get more feedback” from the organization, as he put it. As a matter of fact, the information flow basically went one way only, down,

The leadership strongly believed in the motto “Repetition is the mother of skill,” and Stieg was quite sure that these visuals of the business plan for 1986 had been shown at least three times before, possibly in a slightly different order.

in the end, it was the police’s role to investigate crimes, the prosecutor’s to bring suspects to trial, and the court’s to determine their guilt. If the police did not act on his information, he was still confident that they had done their best, just as he had.

In it they compare Palme to Hitler and write that there is only one punishment for a traitor.

they seriously believed that Nazis were socialists—a ridiculously naive conflation of radically different ideologies based on the use of a similar term.

open padded envelopes from the wrong end under a phone book to protect against letter bombs.

that’s how it goes with research. You don’t really know what you’re looking for or where to look and that’s what makes it so exciting.

They served us our last meal, which consisted of Coca-Cola and tinned sardines. I didn’t like the Coca-Cola, but the sardines were good.

I drove carefully back to the hotel, tipsy from the beer and euphoric at having succeeded. I remembered to drive on the left. I remembered to change gears with my left hand. Whoops, that was the windshield wipers.

Cui bono? Who stands to gain?

The sun rose at nine o’clock in the morning and set just after three in the afternoon, but people didn’t really notice anyway. It was dark all the time thanks to the clouds.

a Sydney pizza with extra everything, which came with French fries and shaved kebab meat on top.

Hanlon’s razor says: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.