One of Oslo’s biggest jewellery stores is emptied in a break-in. The perpetrators make away with almost 20 kilos of pure gold, a multitude of expensive jewellery and – perhaps most importantly – the Maltese clock, by itself worth more than five million Norwegian kroner. The robbers are caught, but not all of the stolen goods are retrieved. Among the pieces gone missing is the Maltese clock.

The robbery trail leads straight to the obnoxious Levi Hildonen and Schooner Cove. We join the four friends Cecilia, Leo, Une and Une’s dog Egon in their nerve-tingling hunt for the missing loot. But the road to the truth and the Maltese clock is a perilous one, lined with escaped prisoners, mysterious guests, a dead man, secret diaries and dark, old passages into bunkers left from the war.

The Maltese Mystery is the second book in Jørn Lier Horst’s CLUE series. The series’ name comes from the first letter in each protagonist’s name: Cecilia, Leo, Une, and Une’s dog Egon. In each of the series’ books a new mystery and a new ethical question is introduced along with the thoughts of one of the world’s most well-known philosophers. The CLUE books are best selling crime fiction for younger readers aged 9-12.