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Murder at the Savoy
Arne Dahl
Maj Sjowall
Per Wahloo
The sixth thrilling installment in the Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s – the novels that have inspired all Scandinavian crime fiction.Widely recognised as the greatest masterpieces of crime fiction ever written, these are the original detective stories that pioneered the detective genre.When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful industrialist, is casually shot during an after-dinner speech, the repurcussions – both on the international money markets and on the residents of the small coastal town of Malmö – are widespread. Chief Inspector Martin Beck is called in to help catch a killer nobody, not even the victim, was able to identify. He begins a systemic search for the friends, enemies, business associates and call girls who may have wanted Palmgren dead – but in the process he finds to his dismay that he has nothing but contempt for the victim and sympathy for the murderer…Written in the 1960s, they are the work of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo – a husband and wife team from Sweden. The ten novels follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction. The novels can be read separately, but do follow a chronological order, so the reader can become familiar with the characters and develop a loyalty to the series. Each book has a new introduction in order to help bring these books to a new audience.
MAJ SJÖWALL AND
PER WAHLÖÖ
Murder at the Savoy
Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate
Copyright (#ulink_8c142a89-c410-52b4-8ef4-44b30b96920a)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors' imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2009
This 4th Estate edition published in 2016
This translation first published by Random House Inc, New York, in 1971
Originally published in Sweden by P. A. Norstedt & Söners Forlag
Copyright text © Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1970
Copyright introduction © Arne Dahl 2009
Cover photograph © Shutterstock
PS Section © Richard Shephard 2007
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007242962
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007323432
Version: 2018-05-18
From the reviews of the Martin Beck series: (#ulink_205a679c-36f5-508f-b2c4-6be09b1fedda)
‘First class’
Daily Telegraph
‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural ever accomplished’
MICHAEL CONNELLY
‘Hauntingly effective storytelling’
New York Times
‘There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö’
The National Observer
‘Sjöwall/Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedural in the world’
Birmingham Post
Contents
Cover (#ua70c99ea-4c88-5798-b1f6-b9f62a112c83)
Title Page (#u27159c44-745b-5065-8a44-7fe7c93eefc1)
Copyright (#u3f5b9bb4-dda5-5134-a766-1a06b556b2de)
Praise (#u9f4d4956-8906-549b-b75d-be0a72109dd9)
Introduction (#u9acda28f-9d1c-5df7-8a98-b591ed703440)
Chapter 1 (#ub12ea304-12c7-5460-9414-1c9b0837293f)
Chapter 2 (#u5fc3c74f-a8bf-570d-8895-cb60cc1e44bf)
Chapter 3 (#u9f22f8dc-a50c-5896-81ef-5a8a1dcaa538)
Chapter 4 (#ud302cc97-c17b-5020-9f25-da3fc4970074)
Chapter 5 (#u7165b064-3a58-5035-98ae-a233e04c1e8f)
Chapter 6 (#u679a8910-3c84-5f86-a17c-f9a314fd6764)
Chapter 7 (#u42d78a1c-51a9-56bc-8efa-c41707db6e80)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Authors (#litres_trial_promo)
Other Books By (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_c6f16bca-c9bd-5383-91b3-7de7a7cc6043)
It’s unusual to be able to point to the actual parents of a literary tradition. It’s even more unusual when we speak of an entire genre. But that is actually the case for the Swedish crime fiction genre that is still the strongest today: the police procedural that has a perspective of social criticism. Before Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö appeared on the scene, the Swedish detective novel looked completely different. With them all the naïveté of the classic murder mystery was irrevocably lost.
Almost all Swedish authors who write police procedurals have at one time or another been hailed as successors to Sjöwall and Wahlöö. In my case, it has happened rather more often than for other writers. And I have never objected. When people ask me about my role models, I usually say: Sjöwall and Wahlöö. This is the honest truth, even though in life I’m generally not particularly dependent on role models – whether I sink or swim, I believe in going my own way. It’s always better for an author to speak in his own voice.
Writers of detective novels are almost always expected to say that they don’t read detective novels. And I have tended to live up to these expectations. When I took my first stumbling steps towards writing crime fiction nearly a decade ago, I could in all honesty say: I don’t read detective novels.
But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, I readily admit that the very opposite was true. The books that I read as an adolescent were to an absurdly high degree based on suspense fiction: nail-biting cliffhangers, action stories, classic murder mysteries, spy thrillers – you name it. I read absolutely everything that contained even the slightest hint of suspense.
You might well ask when the adolescent mind is at its most receptive, at which age in particular and under which mental conditions the most indelible impressions are made. Fifteen is a strong candidate. It could be deemed the most manic-depressive age in anyone’s life. On the one hand, life seems an almost incessant torment; on the other hand, you are starting to realize who you are and, in spite of everything, what possibilities life has to offer.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö came into my life after I had actually given up all those childish suspense books. And so I was ready for completely different literary impressions (precociously ready, that is). But when those two authors appeared, not only did they make use of all the various suspense traditions in which I had immersed myself, they also added two elements that I had been missing up until then: humour and a critical view of contemporary society.
And one more thing: an incredibly nuanced and meticulously chiselled use of language.
It’s always risky to return to a reading experience that had once proved so decisive in your life. Disappointment is the rule; relief is the exception. Yet I feel no disappointment when I re-read the ten books that make up the series called The Story of a Crime. I may feel a bit surprised by the brief format and the relatively simple plots – and perhaps also by the unrelenting plight of Martin Beck’s weary attitude towards life. And yet – what I really feel is relief. Relief that the books are still so good. That they actually are good role models. And for that I will always be grateful.
The books in the series known collectively as The Story of a Crime were published in Sweden between 1965 and 1975, with one book appearing each year except in 1973. But it was in that year that Per Wahlöö said in an interview: ‘In the beginning we tried to keep a low profile in order to reach an audience, but the socialist elements have undoubtedly become more prominent.’ As early as 1966 Wahlöö stated their goal with great clarity: ‘The basic idea is, via one long novel of approximately 3,000 pages – divided into ten freestanding parts, or chapters, if you will – to present a cross-section of a society that possesses a specific structure and to analyze criminality as a social function as well as its relationship to both society and the various types of moral lifestyles that encompass the society in question.’
In other words: literature emblematic of the 1968 generation. It ranges from the period of dawning political consciousness in 1965 up to what might be considered the most dogmatic of years, 1975. It was supposed to be like much of the fiction coming out of 1968: so politically doctrinaire that all forms of literary tension were lost and the whole thing fell flat.
The remarkable thing was that this didn’t happen. Not even in the last novel, The Terrorists, which was more or less completed by cutting and pasting it together after Wahlöö’s death. This novel is truly ideological down to the smallest detail. The final scene is significant. Martin Beck and his new lover, Rhea, are visiting the home of his former colleague Lennart Kollberg and his wife Gun. Here the entire series is supposed to be summed up, the threads from all ten books drawn together. There is also, in a rudimentary fashion, a political summation of the preceding ten years. But it happens in a relaxed and clear context. The four characters are sitting together playing a game as they chat. The game is called Crossword. One person says a letter of the alphabet and the others have to try to place it in a grid on their piece of paper. Kollberg keeps winning, and they keep starting over. He brings the scene to a close with the words: ‘It’s my turn to start. So I say “x,” “x” as in “Marx”.’
But the point is that the literary creation is never allowed to be subsumed by political proselytizing. The authors never forget the conventions of time and space; they never forget that the novel has to place the characters in a particular setting and that it has to be done with a certain vitality – a vitality that always comes before ideology. Which is what you will discover if you read the books closely.
With the sixth novel, Murder at the Savoy, from 1970, the ideological perspective moves to the forefront. From a purely literary point of view, the book is among the very best in the series – the technical skill of the authors is at its peak, and the humour is most fully developed – and yet the novel is also problematic. Both amazing and problematic.
It’s amazing because the literary creation has never been better. It’s problematic because the book personifies the least appealing side of the leftist politics of 1968. I think that in some ways we can talk about the dehumanizing side of the Left. The extremely predictable depiction of the capitalist circles criticized by the book is unrelenting. The corporate executive who is assassinated at the Savoy in Malmö in the opening chapter is given virtually no redeeming or even human qualities. Although there is a satirical power in the portrayal, it leaves the reader with a bitter aftertaste. So this was what the dehumanizing side of the Left looked like when ideology took precedence over humanism, and when the end was allowed to justify the means.
But if you’re prepared to accept this point of view, Murder at the Savoy makes for thoroughly fascinating reading. The book presents an incomparable picture of a social climate during a critical period in both Swedish and world history – a social climate that was in many ways idiotic and inhumane, and we are still living on the fringes of it today. If you read all ten books in order, you will actually discover that together they do form the story of a crime. An enormous crime.
What was it that Sjöwall and Wahlöö accomplished with their series of books? What was it that struck such a chord in a fifteen-year-old boy that twenty years later it triggered his own production of crime fiction? I think it was the sense of suppressed rage. A fire – but at the same time a strictly disciplined fire. The slowly emerging awareness that rage which is uncontrolled and without direction will fall flat. Yet at the same time, the fire must be present, and it must be preserved.
Maybe it was the desire to find a form for their anger.
Jan Arnald / Arne Dahl
(translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally)
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