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. —Hanlon’s razor

when you got down to looking at the level of the individual people involved, the picture became hard to understand, at least to everyone except Stieg, who remembered most of it—and if he didn’t, he always knew exactly where to look in all his papers.

If journalists want to find out something from someone who doesn’t want to talk, they need to utilize methods that are more effective than an interview. In Stieg’s case, that had included anything from infiltrations to computer hacking.

Stieg could draw pictures of networks showing the contacts between people and organizations, sometimes based solely on circumstantial evidence or gut feelings. Anna-Lena would question ideas and demand facts. Together, their skills were unbeatable. She would be the perfect devil’s advocate for him to test his latest theory on.

The reception of the book The Sweden Democrats in 2001 was gushing, as it had been for The Extremist Right a few years earlier. But just as it had then, interest waned in the media as soon as the next reality show star did something stupid.

Stieg had known since back when he began fighting extremism that there was no such thing as a final victory. Democracy was always under threat. It had to be defended all the time.

The enormous amount of work Stieg must have put into this was evident—late nights, weekends—when he read, pondered, wrote, and sorted materials. Many hours that he could have spent doing things with Eva and his friends, or something else entirely. He could have had a completely normal family and lived in Bromma. But then he wouldn’t have been Stieg Larsson. His books wouldn’t have been written, right-wing extremism would have had freer rein in Sweden, and his investigations into the Palme assassination would never have happened.

Some of the world’s biggest export contracts applied to weapons, and if anyone stood in the way of these deals or threatened to reveal secrets that could harm the bottom line, then a human life was a low price for being able to complete the highly lucrative and often shadowy deals.

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