Lisbeth

Theresa found this:

I just read this in one of the book blogs this morning. Yes!

In an interview with Word & Film, Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish film version of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, said the "key to the whole Larsson success is Lisbeth Salander. You have a rich family on an isolated island and in comes this classic investigating journalist with a flair for women. If you read crime novels, there's nothing new about that. But then Lisbeth comes in. That's his stroke of genius. She's this punkish squatter who looks like she walked out of Berlin/Copenhagen in the '80s. At the same time she's the best hacker in Sweden, which is also certainly a cliché, but she gets away with it because she's a woman with the worst past you could ever imagine. And instead of making her a victim, he makes her a fighter. She's the violent dark angel of revenge who draws the line in the sand that says, 'Whatever man dares to cross this line, I will fuck you up bad.' Women respond to the fact that she's not a victim."