Lisbeth Salander's story, about a 23 year old hacker chic, haunted by a nasty past, in its various renditions, has had electric success for about a decade now. Hey, if you can land Daniel Craig for the U.S. film, you know you're on the money train.

Part of the allure of this pop culture cottage industry - three books, with a fourth on the way, films in both Swedish and English, TV miniseries and graphic novels - generally now known as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (or, in some circles, the Millennium trilogy) is the strange tale of the originating creator: Stieg Larsson.

The story of Larsson is full of irony. Never was one's story so ripe with the conditional clause: just before. It was indeed just before he became a bestselling novelist that Larsson was a notorious crusader against the menacing forces of Fascism and plutocracy in Swedish society. Or, at least, so it was that he perceived his foes. And, in like manner, just before he became a bestselling author, generating a considerable personal fortune, he died. (You see, you're never appreciated while you're alive.)

This poses two questions to the inquiring mind. First, if he had lived, would he have remained quite as suspicious of wealth as a marker of evil? And, second, might the prior two facts be related?

Speculation on this latter question has led to some genuine lunacy. As a relatively young man, Larsson embraced Communism and anyone who pays any attention to such matters will be well aware that this creed has always been conspiratorial to its core. As a consequence, there's no astonishment at learning that for Larsson the 80s and 90s were devoted to unearthing the sinister secrets of rightist extremists and crypto-Aryan cabals.

The institutional legacy of all this was Larsson's establishment of a foundation and magazine, which he eventually edited, named Expo. These were pledged to exposing Swedish society's dark forces, its blackguards and villains. Now, don't mistake my tone here; it's not a matter of doubting the existence of such plotters and fantasists. It's just that fantasists are exactly what I think they are. They, no less than their arch enemies, like Larsson, exaggerate their relevance and influence all out of proportion to reality so as to make themselves and their titanic struggle seem of epic consequence. (I feel confident in saying that when barbarism next descends upon Western civilization, it won't be wearing jackboots and swastikas.)

So, to be clear, no, Larsson's "heart attack" on the "anniversary" of Kristallnacht is not the least bit suspicious or peculiar to me. And it's certainly not evidence of anything. Don't you see, if the vile plotters had held off this insidious assassination until 2008, well then, that would have been something else entirely? I mean, 70 years exactly to the day! Because, 70 years has some great relevance, right? Look, this is just the kind of silly way that conspiracy theorists think. I don't take any of it seriously; you'll have to judge for yourself.

Nonetheless, from the perspective of entertainment, Larsson's fixation on right-wing conspiracies paid off handsomely in becoming the thematic and plot milieu of his now much read and cinematically adapted novels. And if anything, they've apparently resonated even more in America than in his Swedish homeland.

The plots and degeneracy of these blackguard extremists provide the fodder for super-girl sleuth Lisbeth Salander - she of the photographic memory, chess-like strategic mind, mathematical skills to make Fermat weep, and all buttressed by hacker skills that leave any bank or police department computer system naked before her will. Chummed up with her journalist sidekick, Mikael Blomkvist, evil has no chance. Indeed, in one of the sequels, it appears that maybe returning from the dead has been added to Lisbeth's impressive catalogue of super hero skills.

Okay, it is all a bit far-fetched. But whatever stretches of suspended disbelief (or plausible deniability) Larsson may ask of us, the protagonists and their virtuous mission makes for fun reading and viewing. And, hey, there's no success like market success.

The final irony, in it all, I suppose, is that even a paranoid commie like Larsson could brush lips with the zeitgeist and hit the jackpot. Though, I'm inclined to think that one probably ought not to reflect too deeply upon just what it is that that says about the rest of us.