The Falcon's Malteser

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The Falcon's Malteser is one of the Diamond Brothers series of books by Anthony Horowitz. Set in London, the book tells the story of Nick Diamond, one of a pair of teen brother detectives, who is hired by a midget to protect a box of Malteser chocolates. When their client is found dead, and Nick's brother Tim is charged with the murder, Nick has to solve the crime to clear his brother's name. The title of the book is a spoof on The Maltese Falcon.

[edit] Family background

Early on the book, Nick (who narrates the story) explains that, before he went to live with his older brother Herbert, he'd lived with his parents in a part of London called Wiernotta Mews (word play on Queen Victoria's famous phrase We're not amused). At the time, his parents planned to fly (with Nick) to Australia. Herbert had joined the police (one week before the local training station was destroyed in a fire, largely implied to be Herbert's fault), and could look after himself, more or less.

Nick, not wanting to go to Australia, managed to flee Heathrow at the last minute, leaving his parents to fly off to Sydney on their own. He went to live with Herbert - who had been sacked, having shot the weapons training instructor in a freak accident and had caused various other mishaps during his two months at Ladbroke Grove.

[edit] Plotline

The first chapter introduces Nicholas 'Nick' Simple and his older brother, Herbert, who goes by the pseudonym 'Tim Diamond'. They live in a flat above a supermarket somewhere in London, and are down on the luck, with hopeless Herbert not being able to get a suitable job.

The first chapter also introduces Johnny Naples - a vertically-challenged South American who comes to the office carrying a suspicious package, and acting as if he's being trailed. He tries to explain the situation, whilst Herbert tries (and miserably fails) to put on a hardman act. When Naples offers them £200 sterling just to look after the package, with another £100 in it if the package is safe on the day he returns, Herbert accepts - but from the very start, Nick isn't so sure.

The next day - after going to the cinema to see 101 Dalmatians - they find their flat turned over by someone during the day. After a sleepless night, they check the mail to find a note left by 'The Fat Man' (likely a take-off on Dashiell Hammett's character Gutman from The Maltese Falcon, renamed The Fat Man in the 1941 adaption of the film starring Humphrey Bogart. The Fat Man, Herbert says, is the biggest criminal in England, involved in almost any crime there is - armed robbery, arson, theft and armed burglary are some of the things Herbert lists. The note demands that the Diamonds meet in Trafalgar Square at one o'clock sharpish.

It turns out that the pseudonym fat man is rather ironic - when the man himself is finally revealed, he's one of the thinnest men Nick's ever seen, with the rings on his fingers slipping off almost constantly. Almost pleasant conversation elapses into threats when Nick tells the Fat Man that they don't have the box. The Fat Man then gives Nick and Herbert two days to find the box. When they return home, they discover that what's in the package is nothing more than a box of Maltesers - a very popular type of sweet in Britain, with a crunchy centre coated in milk chocolate.

Dumbfounded as to why Johnny Naples would pay them handsomely to look after a box of chocolates, they visit the (fictional) Hotel Splendide after a quick enquiry at a shop, with the keeper saying that the owner of a hotel in Portobello Road mentioned to him that a dwarf was staying at his hotel. When they go to Room 39 at Hotel Splendide however, they arrive at exactly the time that he's shot. Nick rushes into the room just in time to see someone jumping out of the window to safety. (The back wall of the hotel is barely six feet from a flyover - this would give whoever shot Johnny Naples the perfect escape route). Naples opens his mouth and is able to say "The sun...", and then "the falcon...", before he dies.

A plain-clothes police man, disguised as a drunk in street, arrests them and they're shopped to Ladbroke Grove Police Station, where Herbert's old boss, Chief Inspector Snape, flanked by his violent assisant Boyle, arrives to question them. Snape - who couldn't stand Herbert during his service there - apparently forms a grudging respect for Nick when he realises how smart he is for his age. When Nick offers Snape to tell him everything the Diamonds know in exchange for what the police know, Snape begins to tell him story.

The Falcon that Naples mentioned with his dying breath is the alias of the late Henry von Falkenberg, an English-German international criminal who had been living in La Paz, Bolivia, when the police last heard of him. A great criminal, he was involved in all sorts of crimes all over the world (Snape's various locations include Russia, Canada, Holland and England). The Falcon would only deal in one currency - uncut diamonds, and he had a stash of diamonds all over the world. However, according to Snape, a few days before the story begins, The Falcon was knocked down by a bus just outside the main airport in La Paz as he rushed to catch the next flight to England. The man travelling with him in the ambulance on the way to hospital was Johnny Naples.

According to Inspector Snape, Johnny Naples was a quack doctor living in La Paz, Bolivia, with a run-down practice in the city's backstreets. However, with The Falcon, his luck apparently changes - the criminal, with his last breath, tells him that, in London, there is a fortune in uncut diamonds with a worth of around £3,500,000. With the police on his tail, Naples then flies to England. But, Snape explains that others have heard of the diamond fortune, and are following Johnny Naples. Snape then lists the names on a blackboard.

The Fat Man: The number one criminal in England, the Fat Man had often done deals with the Falcon, according to Snape, and he probably knew where Naples was staying before the police did. Also, if the Fat Man had £350,000,000 he could probably become an international himself.

Beatrice von Falkenberg: The Falcon's Dutch wife, Beatrice von Falkenberg was once the greatest actress in the Netherlands. The Falcon fell in love with her when he saw her in Othello. But he never apparently told her where the diamonds were hidden. Therefore, she would probably want to know.

William Gott and Eric Himmell: Gott and Himmell were German, but they were educated at Eton. It is largely implied that they murdered the P.E. instructor, the local vicar and the deputy headmaster, who was found hung with his own school tie. They were the Falcon's two lieutenants.

The Professor aka Quentin Quisling: Professor Quentin Quisling (his name isn't mentioned until the chapter The Professor) was once the Falcon's technological whiz-kid, inventing various things for the Falcon. However, a year previous to the book, he goes missing. According to Snape, he could be dead.

Snape then tells Herbert he's a suspect, mainly because they were found with Naples dying, in his hotel room, just moments after a gunshot rang out - and Herbert was holding the gun that had killed the dwarf. The Chief Inspector then demands why Naples came to the Simples in the first place. Nick tells him that he'd been looking for protection of some sort. In the end, Snape lets them go, but with a caution. They head over to a fast food restaurant, where they chew the case over. After finding a matchbox from a nightclub called The Casablanca Club (a nod toward another one of Humphrey Bogart's movies), they decide to pay the club a visit.

Quickly, they find that Naples must have been a regular there - a waiter mistakes Nick for him, and offers him a bottle of free champagne, and a singer called Lauren Bacardi asks of Johnny's well-being. However, just moments after the brothers feel they're getting somewhere, Bacardi is snatched by two shady figures in a blue van. Nick manages to step onto the back of the van, but as the van hits 60m/h (96km/h), he's thrown off and into a wall of cardboard boxes.