A woman seeks an explanation for her mother's mysterious disappearance 34 years earlier.

Kinsey Millhone's newest client, Michael Sutton, claims he has recently remembered a long-repressed event in his childhood that could unlock a twenty-year-old mystery; but as Kinsey tries to help Michael find the scene of a crime he witnessed, she begins to wonder if her client is telling her the whole truth.

Mikael Blomkvist is publishing the story of his career, exposing the extensive sex trafficking operation between Sweden and Eastern Europe, but when two investigative journalists are killed the night before the story runs and Lisbeth Salander is implicated, Mikael vows to clear the girl's name and find the true killer.