I’m immensely grateful to all those who spoke to me for this book, in Sweden, the UK, the US and other points of the compass. Mark Campbell was a rock when I was putting together my British Crime Writing: an Encyclopaedia, and he has proved just as Gibraltar-like here (as indeed he has been in all my years of editing Crime Time), as was Tom Geddes, Scandinavian translator extraordinaire, particularly for this revised edition. An invaluable source was the Bloomsbury Square team of publishers MacLehose Press and Quercus: Lucy Ramsey, Nicci Pracca and Larsson’s UK publisher Christopher MacLehose, who gave me crucial help when I first entered the Larssonian world via interviews and articles for various UK newspapers and magazines.
I owe a particular debt to one of Larsson’s own favourite writers, Val McDermid, who was generous with her time. The Rap Sheet’s Ali Karim, Larsson aficionado extraordinaire, supplied much useful material, and Maxim Jakubowski – who, apart from being the man who commissioned this book, availed me throughout of his usual crime fiction acumen. And I’m particularly grateful to the authors, critics and journalists who gave of their time, along with Swedish friends and professionals (including publishers, agents and members of the Swedish Embassy in London, past and present – with a special mention for Johan Theorin, providing me with invaluable Swedish scuttlebutt); they were – in alphabetical order:
Karin Altenberg, Karin Alvtegen, Marcel Berlins, Ann Cleeves, N J Cooper, John Dugdale, Martin Edwards, R J Ellory, Dan Fesperman, Peter James, Rachel Johnson, Morag Joss, Camilla Läckberg, Mark Lawson, Dan Lucas, Julian Maynard-Smith, Steven Murray, Håkan Nesser, Kim Newman, Heather O’Donoghue, Sofia Odberg, The Rap Sheet, Robert Ryan, Mark Sanderson, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Joan Smith, Henry Sutton, Frank Tallis, Andrew Taylor, Boyd Tonkin, Dan Waddell, Minette Walters, Carl-Otto Werkelid, my copyeditor Rodney Burbeck and my inestimable editor John Wordsworth.