Some Apparent Deaths And Resurrections

See here.

(i) Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander is shot in the head with a low caliber pistol, loses consciousness and is buried in a shallow grave of loose soil but wakes up and digs herself out. Maybe Larsson could have left her apparently dead between volumes?

(ii) At the end of From Russia, With Love, the reader thinks that James Bond is dead;
at the end of You Only Live Twice, the other characters think that he is dead;
near the end of his last novel, The Man With The Golden Gun, Bond is shot and loses consciousness...

(iii) Poul Anderson makes us think that Dominic Flandry is going to die near the end of A Stone In Heaven and that Hanno is going to die near the end of The Boat Of A Million Years. However, both are rescued.

Physical Damage
Salander is hospitalized once and Bond several times whereas Flandry does not suffer comparable injuries.

Memory

I recently read here, here, here and here that a Marist Brother whom I knew 1956-60 has been accused of sexual abuse in the 1960s.

I was taught first by Catholic lay teachers, then by Marist Brothers, then by Jesuit priests, and now receive spiritual guidance from Zen monks. I accept responsibility for my past actions by meditating, not by confessing to a priest.

I utterly reject the Jesuit boast that, given the child from an early age, they can answer for the beliefs of the man. To foist particular, highly questionable, almost arbitrary beliefs on defenseless minds is like mental violence. I also abhor the former physical brutality of some Marists and Jesuits and commend those who did not practice corporal punishment while others did. The religious orders have changed with the times. They have not given a moral lead to society despite their claim to do precisely that. I was bullied by school staff and disbelieved by my parents. A young child had no defense unless adults considered the matter serious.

I remember Germanus (see the above links) telling me that I knew that marriage was a sacrament. I did not. I had been told that marriage was a sacrament because I was being educated in a Catholic school. In a different kind of school, I would have been told something different. That was indoctrination, not knowledge. When I became engaged, my mother commented, "I had hoped she would be a Catholic girl." No way. My daughter would only have been harmed by Catholic indoctrination and did not receive it. I gave her a Bible and a life of the Buddha.

In Largs, 1956-60, I had no knowledge of sex, let alone of homosexuality, and did not realize until many years later that I was once in a situation that might have led to sexual abuse although fortunately it did not.

A Fourth Criticism Of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Blomkvist has discovered that Anita was involved in Harriet's disappearance but Henrik asks how he, Blomkvist, knew that Anita had not murdered Harriet. Blomkvist replies that, if Anita had murdered Harriet, then the body would have been found.

No. If Anita smuggled Harriet's living body off the island, then she could have smuggled a dead body, then disposed of it at sea as Martin Vanger did with his victims. However, Blomkvist was independently finding reasons to suspect Martin.

The novel needs a rewrite to give a better explanation of why the photo showing Anita at Harriet's window remained undiscovered for so long.

Three Criticisms of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

(i) Harriet Vangar is photographed at the parade in the town, then goes to the island, where she disappears. There is a thorough search and police investigation. The Inspector and Harriet's uncle continue their private investigation for decades. Eventually Blomkvist, hired by the uncle, notices that, in that photograph, Harriet is not watching the parade and smiling but looking to one side and frowning. In order to find out what she was seeing, he requests access not only to the published photographs taken on that day but also to all the unpublished photographs of the day in the local newspaper archive.

But a thorough police investigation should already have covered all the unpublished photographs. Even if the police had missed the point noticed by Blomkvist, they would have found the face in the window which is also significant.

(ii) Harriet kept a list of names and what looked like local telephone numbers but, as phone numbers, they had no significance. Blomkvist learns entirely by accident that the apparent phone numbers are really Biblical references, then finds that Harriet has underlined these same verses in her Bible. The police should have considered the possibility that the apparent phone numbers were really something else, like numbers standing for letters - or Biblical references. They would then have found the connection with Harriet's Bible. Blomkvist checked the references in Harriet's Bible because it was the only Bible to hand and thus found that they were underlined. But a thorough police investigation would surely have included looking in Harriet's Bible and thus making the same discovery.

(iii) Blomkvist knows that Salander is a hacker because she quotes a draft press release that had existed only in his computer but surely her knowledge, e.g., of his financial information already shows that she is a hacker?