The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) Read Free Page A

weakened, but also from a number of younger writers who took the opportunity to make a name for themselves. They pointed out that Blomkvist was not on Twitter or Facebook and should rather be seen as a relic of a bygone age in which people could afford to work their way through whichever strange old volumes happened to take their fancy. And there were those who took the opportunity to join in the fun and create amusing hashtags like #inblomkvistsday. It was all a lot of nonsense and nobody could have cared less than Blomkvist – or so he persuaded himself.
    It certainly did not help his cause that he had not had a major story since the Zalachenko affair and that
Millennium
really was in a crisis. The circulation was still O.K., with 21,000 subscribers. But since advertising revenue was falling dramatically and there was now no longer additional income from their successful books, and since one of the shareholders, Harriet Vanger, was not willing to put up any more capital, the board of directors had, against Blomkvist’s wishes, allowed the Norwegian Serner newspaper empire to buy 30 per cent of the shares. That was not as odd as it seemed, or not at first sight. Serner published weekly magazines and evening papers and owned a large online dating site and two pay-T.V. channels as well as a football team in Norway’s top division, and it ought not to be having anything to do with a publication like
Millennium
.
    But Serner’s representatives – especially the head of publications Ove Levin – had assured them that the group needed a prestige product and that “everybody” in the management team admired
Millennium
and wanted only for the magazine to go on exactly as before. “We’re not here to make money!” Levin said. “We want to do something significant.” He immediately arranged for the magazine to receive a sizeable injection of funds.
    At first Serner did not interfere on the editorial side. It was business as usual, but with a slightly better budget. A new feeling of hope spread among the editorial team, sometimes even to Blomkvist, who felt that for once he would have time to devote himself to journalism instead of worrying about finances. But then, around the time the campaign against him got under way – he would never lose the suspicion that the Serner Group had taken advantage of the situation – the tone changed and they started to apply pressure.
    Levin maintained that of course the magazine should continue with its in-depth investigations, its literary reporting, its social fervour, all of that stuff. But surely it was not necessary for all the articles to be about financial irregularities, injustices and political scandals. Writing about high society – about celebrities and premieres – could also produce brilliant journalism, so he said, and he spoke with passion about
Vanity Fair
and
Esquire
in America, about Gay Talese and his classic piece, “Frank Sinatra has a Cold”, and about Norman Mailer and Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe and heaven knows who else.
    Blomkvist did not actually have any objections to that, not at the time. Six months earlier he had himself written a long piece about the paparazzi industry, and as long as he could find a serious angle then he was content to profile just about any lightweight. In fact he always said it isn’t the subject that determines if it’s good journalism, it’s the reporter’s attitude. No, what he objected to was what he sensed was there between the lines: that this was the beginning of a longer-term assault and that, to the group,
Millennium
was just like any other magazine, a publication you can damn well shift around any which way you want until it becomes profitable – and colourless.
    So on Friday afternoon, when he heard that Levin had hired a consultant and commissioned several consumer surveys to present on Monday, Blomkvist had simply gone home. For a long time he had sat at his desk or lain in bed composing various impassioned