Criminality Quotes in The Girl Who Played With Fire

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

All her life she had had to choose the cheapest option, and she was not yet used to the idea that she had more than three billion kronor, which she had stolen by means of an Internet coup combined with good-old fashioned fraud. (4.3)

Salander is totally unapologetic about stealing billions from corrupt financier Hans-Erik Wennerström. (Read all about him in Tattoo.) What we are surprised to learn is that she didn't hide her newly acquired assets. The police find out about money in no time. Will she lose the money in the next book? We hope not!

Quote #5

[…] [Palmgren] trusted her enough still to know that whatever she was up to might be dubious in the eyes of the law but not a crime against God's laws. (8.145)

We tend to feel this way about Salander, too, in most cases, even though we are shocked by some of the methods. What about you?

Quote #6

In an aside Svennson mentioned that he had some tentative ideas about an Eastern European gangster named Zala who might get a chapter all to himself […]. (9.115)

Zala is definitely a nasty criminal, into everything from drugs to sex trafficking to murder, probably for fun. Although the good characters in Larsson's novels are nuanced, most of the villains are evil through and through.