Two Moments Of Realization For Mikael Blomkvist

A Poul Anderson fan (at least, this Poul Anderson fan) learns about literary devices like moments of realization, multi-sensory descriptive passages and pathetic fallacies embedded in texts almost as unobtrusively as the grammar and punctuation by reading Anderson, then is struck by these features when they appear in the works of other authors.

Here is an eminently Andersonian moment in Stieg Larsson's second Millennium novel. Lisbeth Salander is a suspect in the murder of a couple named Dag and Mia but Mikael Blomkvist wonders:

"'How she would have known of their existence, I haven't a -'
"Blomkvist suddenly stopped."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2010), CHAPTER 16, p. 270.

Blomkvist has suddenly remembered that Lisbeth is a world-class hacker, that she has hacked his computer before, that he has corresponded electronically with Dag...

Of course, Larsson was not emulating Anderson. Any author can write moments of realization. But Anderson did it so often that he has sensitized me to this particular narrative move when it happens anywhere else.

A few pages later:

"You just won't give up, will you? Blomkvist thought. He was just about to tell Niklasson to piss off when he sat bolt upright in bed. He had just had two great ideas."
-op. cit., p. 276.

Not only another moment of realization but also an italicized thought!