"It was a mean day in SW6. The weather was as raw as a skinned knee. And we were dawn to our last can of beans. Then Johnny Naples walked - or rather waddled - into our lives. He was nervous. He was clutching a suspicions package like his life depended on it. (It did). But, most of all he was small. Very small. In fact, once Johnny took a seat, you couldn't see him. But so what if he was a twitchy, sweaty - albeit nattily dressed - South American dwarf? We all have our shortcomings. He was a client. And a client meant two things. Money, And more beans." Some lucky strike for the Diamond brothers: Tin, and his kid brother Nick. They're would be private eyes and they're some partnership. Tim's the dumb one - so naturally he's the boss - but Nick's the real brows. He's smart. He's slick.. He's spunky. He's also under age - 14 years old, to be precise. But we digress. Back to the dwarf. He entrusts the suspicious package to the Diamond brothers. They do lot open it. (Except of course, they do). Just keep it safe for a couple of days. (Some hope.) Until the dwarf comes back to claim it. Except that, in the best tradition of the Forties film noir, he never does. Because the next time the boys encounter Johnny Naples he's lying on the bed in a scuzzy hotel room. And he's not asleep. He's dead. Worse than that, there's a police bust and the Diamond boys are caught red-handed standing over the limp dwarf clutching the smoking murder weapon. It's cell-time! But it's also time for a compromise. Perhaps the police and the Diamond brothers can help each other - because both of them are after the same thing. £3/4 million in uncut diamonds, to be precise - the fabulous fortune of one Henry von Falconberg: international crook, also known as the falcon, a man who'd been behind just about every major crime in the western world. Note the use of the past tense, there. Because the falcon has now flown off to his reward in a better, richer world, leaving the dregs of his fife - his enemies and loved ones - to squabble over his fortune. But first they've got to lay their hands on it. And it's the Diamond brothers who hold the key - or rather the package. Johnny Naples' little legacy. Its contents? A box. Its contents? Chocolates! Suddenly, the Diamond brothers discover the true meaning of popularity. Everybody wants to know them. Intimately. There's the black widow, Beatrice von Falconberg: a classy dame and mistress of disguise. There's the Professor, Falconbergs: pet scientist, a worm preserved in alcohol and cignrelle smoke. There's Gott and Himmel, two assassins who've learnt iheir trade at the best of schools: Eton. And there's the Fat Man.The biggest criminal in England. Until he lost weight. It's a bloodstained, bullet-ridden, body-littered, twisty little trail for our brace of private dicks. It had started with a dwarf clutching a box of chocolates. It continues a cemetery, a seedy nightclub, the inside workings of a Bechstein grand, and Selfridges Christmas grotto. And it ends with Nick, the plucky kid, alone and heroic, about to be thrown into the watery grave of the Thames with a cement-filled bath attached to his legs. Poor kid. He's been kidnapped, practically seduced by two grown women, and threatened with death. And it's way past his bedtime...
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