The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Chapter 2 Summary

How It All Goes Down

Friday, December 20

  • Meet Dragan Armansky, the 56-year-old CEO and COO of Milton Security, an international company specializing in four areas:
  • 1) identifying threats, 2) security systems, 3) bodyguards, and 4) privately investigating people.
  • Now meet 24-year-old Lisbeth Salander, the best investigator Armansky's ever known.
  • Salander drives him crazy and doesn't fit in at conservative Milton Securities.
  • She looks like a teen, and has piercings and tattoos, including one of a wasp on her neck and a dragon on her shoulder.
  • Holger Palmgren, a lawyer who helps kids with problems, convinced Armansky to hire her.
  • She has zero social skills, but she gets results. So, she works freelance and makes her own rules.
  • Today, Salander and Armansky are meeting with a lawyer named Dirch Frode, who hired Milton Security to investigate Mikael Blomkvist.
  • Salander tells Frode that Blomkvist is 42 years old, is part-owner of Millennium, and has written two books on corrupt financiers.
  • He's an excellent journalist who fights financial corruption.
  • He has a fairly stable income, but will be hurting after paying all of his court fines. He seems completely honest, moral, and incorruptible.
  • Salander tells Frode and Armansky that she thinks that Blomkvist was probably set up in the Wennerström affair. He wouldn't publish slanderous-type material unless he believed it was true.
  • Frode asks Salander if she can investigate the Wennerström affair, and she says she can.
  • Finishing up her summary, she tells Frode that Blomkvist was married to Monica Abrahamson in 1986, and got divorced from her in 1991.
  • They have a daughter named Pernilla, who now lives with her mom.
  • Blomkvist is a ladies' man, and is in a long-standing romantic relationship with the editor-in-chief of Millennium, Erika Berger.
  • Berger is married to the artist Greger Beckman, who knows about the relationship and doesn't mind. But, it might have been a problem for Monica Abrahamson.