Four years ago, an unknown Swedish journalist delivered three manuscripts to his publishers in Stockholm. These supremely exciting, page-turning thrillers featuring crusading liberal journalist Mikael Blomkvist and disturbing punk heroine Lisbeth Salander came to be known as the Millennium Trilogy.

The unknown journalist was Stieg Larsson, and his books went on to sell more than 3 million copies in Sweden alone. Tragically, a few months before the publication of volume 1, Larsson died suddenly, aged fifty. He never saw the worldwide phenomenon his work would become.

After his death, the Millennium Trilogy swept through Europe, collecting awards and gathering rave reviews.

By the time the first volume of the Millennium Trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was translated into English in February 2008, France had sold 1,113,039 copies, Norway 746,958 copies, and Germany 400,000, while in Denmark the books were being outsold only by the Bible.

Now sales are at more than 22 million copies in 35 countries.

Irrespective of the nation, people were captured by Larsson's stories: new, engaging and gripping, they were lauded everywhere as a complex and genuinely unique contribution to crime fiction.

“Perhaps the biggest splash since Henning Mankell, however, has been made by a writer who was dead before his novel first appeared in English … striking crime novels … highly original heroine … utterly compelling” Good Book Guide