The Falcon's Malteser

This book is from another fabulous series of Anthony Horowitz. The Diamond Brothers, they share the pain, and victory. Nick here receives mystery stuff. After, they found that it was something very important. The possession of this goes back and forth, and finally to it's real owner, who is not the one who gave it to Tim. I recommend this book to someone who have read Alex Rider series. It is very good. ( )

The Falcon's Malteser is the first book of the Diamond Brothers series. It is a book about a dwarf who gives the Diamond Brothers the Malteser and tells them not to give it to anyone but just him. The next day, some strangers break in the Diamond Brothers' room and looks for the Malteser, however they don't find it. They find out that the Malteser is some kind of a key to the place where the diamonds are. Many groups are looking for it, and they are chasing the brothers with armed weapons. They finally run away and finds the Diamond themselves.

When I selected this book, as a swap from from a member of readitswapit, I had no idea that it was a children's book, I assumed it was a parody of the detective genre, rather like the Malcolm Pryce books. It is, however, it is definitely aimed squarely at teenagers.

It is written in the style of Dashiell Hammett (naturally) and Raymond Chandler, and you would be able to hear Humphrey Bogart delivering the lines, except that you are always conscious that the narrator is a 13 year old boy from London.

The unlikely detective heroes are the Diamond Brothers, Herbert Timothy Simple and Nick Simple. Herbert is in his twenties, a failed policeman and an idiot. He runs a failing detective agency and calls himself Tim Diamond, his brother Nick ran away from Heathrow when his parents emigrated to Australia and is now living in squalor and poverty with Tim.

The plot is obvious and absurd, full of stock underworld characters (actually the plot isn't quite as daft as Midsommer Murders' plots, many of which Horowitz also wrote) the 'mean streets' pastiche is pretty good and I enjoyed the book.

I would have enjoyed it as teenager, it is remarkably non-politically correct, he calls a dwarf a dwarf and a pair of gay Nazi-loving German thugs tie him up and make him eat fairy cake, he has to steal food from the local Asian corner shop and goes to a night club and gets ill on champagne.

I drank some champagne. I'd never drunk the stuff before and I can't say I really liked it.
But I was thirsty and it was free. Herbert joined me, muttering about the ten pounds and a moment
later a spotlight cut through the clouds [snip] At one time she might even have been beautiful.
But the years hadn't been good to her. They'd taken the colour out of her hair, put a husk in her
voice, hollowed out her throat and slapped her around a bit for good measure.

I drank some more champagne. The bubbles were going right up my nose and dancing behind my eyes.
The pianist had come to the end of a tune but as the woman moved forward he began another and she
sang almost as if she didn't care what she was doing.[snip]

"You're not Johnny," she said.
"We're friends of his..." I said. I let the sentence hang in the air. I needed her name to complete it.
"Lauren Bacardi," she said. "Where's Johnny?"

Pretty good, and it only took a couple of hours to read. ( )