Murder at the Savoy - post I

Every reader has a guilty pleasure, a book that although it isn't Tolstoy fills them with joy, and in my case the genre best able to deliver that quick hit of intense reading pleasure is the thriller.

Being slightly more specific about it the police procedurals, following the case through the lens of the police activity, when done well can be gripping. Two of the masters are husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and with their creation of Martin Beck they take you onto the streets of Sweden in the 1960s and into police stations in Stockholm and Malmo.

The crime tends to take place early on and then the rest of the book is spent following Beck and his colleagues as they try to fathom the often unfathomable and bring the case to a conclusion.

This is no different with a prominent business man shot in a hotel, the Savoy dining room, by a gun man who then jumps out of an open window into the hot summer night and disappears.

From that starting point, with no clear witness statements the police have to start the hunt for a killer.

More tomorrow....