The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson (2005)

Stieg Larsson's posthumously published thriller launched the Scandinavian crime wave and remains one of the most commercially successful debut crime novels ever published. Lisbeth Salander — hacker, rape survivor, moral extremist — is the most compelling crime fiction protagonist of the 21st century. The novel sold 80 million copies globally and established the Swedish procedural as a distinct literary genre.