STOCKHOLM – Fans of the late crime novelist Stieg Larsson are getting lost in the Swedish countryside, searching for the quaint town of Hedestad featured in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

The problem is, it doesn’t exist.

But international readers of Larsson’s best-selling Millennium crime trilogy could be excused for thinking otherwise, because most locations in the books are authentic.

Some of them include the Kaffebar café in Stockholm – a favorite haunt of Larsson’s fictional journalist Mikael Blomqvist – and the Kvarnen bar, where Larsson has tattooed computer hacker Lisbeth Salander spending evenings with her friends from the rock band Evil Fingers.

Both places are on the trendy island of Sodermalm, a former working-class area with narrow streets where old wooden cottages are squeezed between 20th-century stone houses.

The hilly Stockholm district – with popular bars, fashion stores and art galleries – is one of many islands that form the city center and the home of Larsson’s characters.

Blomqvist and Salander, the trilogy’s main characters, both have apartments there. Salander’s friendly first legal guardian Holger Palmgren also lived there before he was hospitalized.

Eager Millennium fans can take the Stockholm City Museum’s Larsson tour, an increasingly popular pastime for aficionados who visit the Swedish capital.

Or they can venture out on their own, visiting the scenes of Blomqvist’s and Salander’s exploits with maps provided by the tourist office.

Starting with Blomqvist’s small apartment in the brown 19th-century building at 1 Bellmansgatan, Millennium fans can relive the books’ plots in the real settings, while listening to the guide’s detailed descriptions.

“It is great to identify the addresses and see what the buildings look like,” said tourist Roland Ojeda of San Francisco. “I think it brings it to life.”

Larsson’s books about a darker side of Sweden, where Blomqvist and Salander become involved in murder mysteries, sex-trafficking scandals and a secret government department, have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

The tour has attracted visitors from as far away as Japan, Canada and Australia, tour guide Eva Palmqvist said.

“I think a lot of people want to savor the experience, the story and the characters,” she said. “I think they want to see this and feel the atmosphere.”

During the two-hour walk, Palmqvist guides the group past the scenic Monteliusvagen, a promenade overlooking other islands that are home to some of the more dubious characters in the book.

The guide makes the point that Larsson’s good characters live in one area, while the evil ones live elsewhere.

The café Kaffebar, on the wide, bustling street of Hornsgatan, is frequented by Blomqvist and was one of Larsson’s favorite spots before he died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 50. Then there is Hedestad – often vividly imagined by Larsson’s readers but nowhere to be found along the coast north of Stockholm, as described in the books.

Still, there is one way to get to know Hedestad – the sleepy town of Gnesta, 45 miles south of Stockholm.

This is the place used to illustrate Hedestad in the Swedish movie of Larsson’s books, with signs about town showing filming locations.

“Last year, some Italian guys came here just because of the books,” says Jonathan Olsson at Gnesta’s tourist office.