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out what she was seeing, he requests access not only to the published photographs taken on that day but also to all the unpublished photographs of the day in the local newspaper archive.

But a thorough police investigation should already have covered all the unpublished photographs.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?