Eva was Stieg Larsson’s partner for 30 years before his death in 2004. She knows better than anyone how he wrote the Millenium trilogy. She has written a memoir ‘Stieg and Me – Memories of my Life with Stieg Larsson’.

Eva revealed that many of the stories that have become legendary about Larsson are distorted or untrue. He worked hard but he wasn’t a workaholic and he ate well, most of the time.

The books were written concurrently. The entire trilogy was complete before the first ‘Men Who Hate Women’ later retitlled in English ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ was published. As many know, Larsson died nine moths before the first publication. The stories were not fully conceived or planned out before they were written. “If something didn’t fit in one book then it might go into one of the others”.

The first book began with the simple story of a man who receives pressed flowers every year and grew from there.

When Larsson died nothing went to Eva as they were unmarried and he had left no will. Everything went to his family. Eva felt that many people rushed in to exploit Stieg’s memory and legacy. She invoked an ancient Nordic curse and she believes many have suffered as a result of that curse.

There is an incomplete fourth book. Two hundred pages are written and exist on a laptop that belongs to EXPO the anti nazi magazine that Stieg founded. It is set in Canada but as a book that was only a third completed it is unlikely to be completed or published. Using ghostwriters “would be just for business.”