Detective comedy 2: Introducing the client

Much like the last lesson, imagine yourself as the lead in a detective story. Look for an interesting looking person in your environment (it might be someone you see on the bus, the checkout operator at your local shop, someone you see on television or on a YouTube clip). They’ve just become your client. If you were building a profile of them by their appearance (as the narrator does in the story)  how would you describe them? What personality could you give them?

A drawing exercise! Find a character in a story you like that you’ve never seen represented as a picture or photo. Find the section of the book that describes their appearance, and draw what you think they look like based on that description and what you know about the character.

• How easy was it? (don’t judge your art skills here, just the description)
• For the parts of the character that weren’t described, what did you draw? What did you base those parts on? 

The Falcon’s Malteser by Anthony Horowitz is the first of 8 novels in The Diamond Brothers series, which tells the adventures of the world’s worst private detective. 

Set in London, it features Nick Simple and his older brother Herbert (who works under the name ‘Tim Diamond’ because he thought it sounded better). As this group of lessons covers, they’re approached by Johnny Naples who employs them to look after a box of chocolates. It contains all the staples of a good detective story - mystery, intrigue, arrests, nightclub singers, shady figures, kidnappings and diamonds.  

The story has also been adapted into a stage play and a film called Diamond’s Edge or Just Ask for Diamond, depending on where you live.

Here is a promo that was created for New Old Friends for their stage production of the story.

And this is a section of the film that matches the passages we're looking at in these lessons!