| Publisher Håkan Bravinger was on holiday in the US when he noticed everyone around the pool was reading the same book. There had been early signs that Stieg Larsson’s debut novel would do well: Swedish readers were hooked. But “none of us could have imagined the global phenomenon it would become,” says Magdalena Hedlund, who represents Larsson’s estate. The book’s publisher, Norstedts, had seen success before. “But this was different,” recalls Bravinger, now publishing director at the company. “Almost surreal.” Journalists flew in from around the world, he says. “There were fan tours, and people flocked to every bar or cafe Lisbeth Salander had ever visited on the page.” Larsson’s creation grew into “undoubtedly the greatest Swedish literary success of our time”. So how did it happen? The inimitable Salander has a lot to do with it. “Implacable, ruthless, but with a heart of gold is all very appealing,” says Paul Engles, commissioning editor at MacLehose Press, which published the UK version of the book in 2008, translated by Steven T Murray. She was a protagonist “unlike any the genre had seen before”, Bravinger adds. And while the womanising Mikael Blomkvist may be “less of a fashionable character” 20 years on, the pair made a strong duo, Engles says. “It’s a bit different from the usual single whisky-drinking detective.” By the time the book was published in the UK, it was already selling well in France and Germany, so some of that buzz likely boosted sales here, Engles explains. But there are many European hits that flop when they reach the UK, he says, so “there must have been some other special sauce”. He thinks it might have been the fact that the books “had a bit of everything”: Larsson explored a different element of suspense fiction with each novel, and because he was “this crusading journalist who had spent much of his life trying to expose fascism, violence against women, corruption, all that fed into the books”. The late 2000s and early 2010s were a golden age for Scandi noir, with Jo Nesbø and shows such as The Bridge attracting massive audiences too. “I don’t think [Larsson’s books] started the wave,” Engles says; they were the “biggest of waves” in a “tide that had already started”. It certainly opened doors for other authors, though. “One of the great truths about publishing is that a big success helps pay for all the other books,” Engles says. The Larsson sales “allowed us a lot of freedom to publish some beautiful books from so many languages and give opportunities to authors and translators that probably wouldn’t have been possible if this one huge tentpole book hadn’t come along”. By the late 2010s, the Nordic noir frenzy had settled. “That great wave broke, and now what remains are the really good writers; the middling talents have fallen away,” Val McDermid announced in 2018. The genre is still seeing big hits. Lars Kepler, the pseudonym of husband-wife team Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, has sold 17m books in the Joona Linna series across 40 languages – the latest instalment was the highest selling hardcover fiction title in Sweden last year. Bravinger believes that many of today’s Scandinavian crime writers owe a debt to Larsson, as well as to those who came before him, such as Henning Mankell and Sjöwall & Wahlöö. Larsson’s debut in particular “helped the world become more curious about stories from beyond the usual literary centres” – the US and UK. “Tragically, Stieg never got to witness the phenomenon he had created.” | 