Murder At The Savoy

Accustomed as he was to public speaking, powerful Swedish industrialist Viktor Palmgren had no idea that his after-dinner speech in elegant Hotel Savoy would be so rudely interrupted that warm summer evening. Suddenly, in the midst of Palmgren’s entertaining remarks, an uninvited guest strolled in, pulled a blue-steel object from his pocket, shot the speaker in the head, and disappeared through an open window. No one in the restaurant was able to identify the gunman, and local police were sheepishly baffled. Enter: Chief Inspector Martin Beck, of the National Homicide Squad. And so we are off on another precision-timed, beautifully constructed tale of police work and further absorbing adventures of Martin Beck and his dogged fellow detectives of Sweden’s National Police. Old friends of Beck and his colleagues will relish the special atmospheric setting and human interest in this latest installment, and may be relieved to note that Beck’s appetite (which failed him regularly in the dyspeptic days before the idea of divorce had ever crossed his mind) has actually begun to improve.