Do we like them?

Do we like Lisbeth Salander?

A character from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005)

Our score: 8 out of 10. Yes, we'd back her. She's prickly and breaks plenty of laws, but she's fiercely loyal and she protects people who are being hurt.

Lisbeth Salander is a young Stockholm investigator and hacker. She is thin, tattooed and pierced, and she says very little. She works for a security firm, and she has a photographic memory and a talent for finding out what people want hidden. The state treats her as someone who needs a legal guardian, and she has little reason to trust anyone in authority.

The story starts when a wealthy industrialist hires her to look into Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just lost a libel case. Blomkvist is then hired to look into the decades-old disappearance of the industrialist's niece, and Lisbeth's path leads back to him and the case.

Her score is high because her anger has a purpose. She is cold, secretive and law-breaking, but she judges people by how they treat others, and she is the one who acts when the system doesn't. We lose a couple of points for the methods she uses and her habit of keeping everyone at arm's length.