Murder at the Oktoberfest (7/49)

Murder at the Oktoberfest (7/49)

"The beer is tapped!" (in Bavarian dialect "O'zapft ist") are the magical words that announce the beginning of Munich's Oktoberfest, the biggest public festival in the world. Each year the fairground operators and Munich's publicans vie with one another in fierce competition for the coveted sites. 

The violent death of the influential city councillor Hubert Serner is thus the talk of the town. Serner's cleaner Diana Aljescu found the lawyer's corpse in his garden pond. Serner, member of the city's committee for economic affairs, played a decisive role in the awarding of licences for the Oktoberfest. All his life he had been a baroque, Bavarian personality. His divorced wife Elizabeth gives Detective Inspectors Ivo Batic and Franz Leitmayer their first clues. Based on the diligent research of their colleague Carlo Menzinger, the investigators of the murder squad toil through an ever longer-growing list of Serner's mistresses. Yet the statements of the interrogated ladies, Ilsa Mischnik and Hilde Gerbera, are not really helpful. But how does August Eckl, the victim's successor, cope with the vested interests of Munich's seasoned publican families and fairground operators? He has to deal, for example, with the resolute proprietor Johanna Buck who wants a beer-garden extension for her already very profitable beer tent - and this is not the only reason why she is at loggerheads with her husband Niklas and her daughter Evelin. Then there is the publican Xaver Neubauer and his son Timo, who are struggling to keep their tent at the Oktoberfest. The siblings Renee and Fridolin Zoll might also be capable of an rash outbreak of violence: they cherish their family's traditional carousel, a beautiful but antiquated merry-go-round, and face financial ruin if they fail to get a licence for the Oktoberfest.