As I'm going through the Hugo winners, I might as well jot down my thoughts. First up, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man from 1951 (the first Hugo winner).

The Demolished Man runs at an impressive breakneck pace. Set in 2301, it opens with Ben Reich having a nightmare about a man with no face. Reich is the head of the massive Monarch Corporation, which his family has run for years, but is worried because it's losing ground to their arch-rival D'Courtney. Reich is so worried by this he's proposed a merger with D'Courtney, but is equally certain he will be rebuffed and will have to kill D'Courtney for Monarch to survive.

So sure is he of this that, when D'Courtney agrees to the merger, Reich misreads the coded communique as a refusal and starts planning the first successful murder for 70 years. Standing in his way are the Espers, or Peepers, a guild of telepaths who've become the world's defacto enforcers. There are three classes of Peepers, from lowly class threes who can only pick up conscious thoughts up to the rare class ones, who can delve deeply into the unconscious mind.

With his financial clout, Reich is able to hire two embittered class ones to run interference for him, some special drugs to get him past D'Courtney's guards, a special gun with a disposable bullet and a really catchy song that keeps running through his head so no-one will accidentally peep him. Unfortunately, when he kills D'Courtney during a specially arranged game of naked sardines, D'Courtney's daughter Barbara witnesses the murder before running away.

Reich initially tries to brazen out the act, but the chief investigator, class one-rated Esper Lincoln Powell, knows Reich is guilty. However, as telepathic evidence is inadmissible, he needs to find more mundane proof of Reich's guilt. Both sides hunt for Barbara as she appears to hold the key to both sides' success.

For something written in the 50s, the Demolished Man still manages to work very well today. True, there are a few chronachronisms such as tapes being used to record things and a large room-sized computer. And the cross-city “jumpers” are just plain weird. But the rest of it stands up well - the whole Esper scenario is practically the template for telepathy in modern Sci-Fi and much of the other technology is sufficiently advanced. The plot grips and doesn't let go, as you alternately root for Reich and Powell as they match wits. Highly recommended.