When industrialist Viktor Palmgren is shot dead during an after-dinner speech at Malmö's finest hotel, the repercussions—both for the international money markets and for the residents of the bustling coastal city—are sweeping and acute. Inspector Martin Beck is called in from Stockholm to help find a killer that nobody seems able to identify, in this sixth novel in the Edgar Award-winning series. But as he delves into the array of friends, enemies, business associates, and call girls who may have wanted Palmgren dead, he realizes to his dismay that he has nothing but contempt for the victim, and sympathy for the murderer. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are "the godparents of Scandinavian crime fiction," according to Jo Nesbø, while Henning Mankell acknowledged their Martin Beck novels as "one of the series that most inspired me.... Whoever is writing crime fiction after these novels is inspired by them in one way or another." Written from the mid-1960s to the mid-70s, the Martin Beck mysteries have been adapted into numerous film, television, and radio dramas.