Murder at the Savoy

This Swedish whodunit, first published in 1971, includes a useful introduction that explains the place of the Martin Beck series among police procedurals. Here, Beck is called in when Victor Palmgren, a most unpleasant gangster capitalist, is shot while making a speech at the posh Savoy Hotel in Malmo and falls face down into his mashed potatoes. The killer escapes out a window, but everyone else in the large and varied cast is nicely captured by Tom Weiner's able and often wonderfully witty performance. Especially when he creates dialogue between two characters with utterly different pitches and timbres, you'll be tempted to laugh with pleasure. One cares less about who actually "dunit" than about the characters, which makes audio the perfect way to enjoy this book. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine