Real-Life Rape, Guilt Drove Dragon Tattoo Author

A friend of the late Stieg Larsson writes that a long-ago trauma is behind the author's blockbuster trilogy that begins with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. When he was 15, Larsson watched as three friends raped a girl their own age. "Her screams were heartrending, but he didn't intervene," writes Kurdo Baski in the Daily Mail. "He was too young and insecure." He spoke to the girl days later, but she refused to forgive him.

"It was obvious, looking at him, that the girl's voice still echoed in his ears, even after he had written three novels about vulnerable, violated, and raped women," writes Boski. "It was probably not his intention to be forgiven after writing the books, but when you read them it is possible to detect the driving force behind them. As a result, the women in his novels have minds of their own and go their own ways. They fight. They resist. Just as he wished all women would do in the real world."

(More Stieg Larsson stories.)