“Why Malta?” my new Maltese friends keep asking me when they find out that my mystery-thriller The Cellini Masterpiece is set in Malta. Mind you, only the Maltese ask that question. Americans ask “Malta who?” or “Where the heck is Malta?” or “Is it about the Maltese Falcon?” (They always think they’re the first ones to say that.)

The difference in questions is obvious. The Maltese are puzzled; many don’t see the wonders of their own country. Americans are plain ignorant. Someone once wrote that the way Americans learn geography is by war.

“Why Malta” is a complicated question to answer. It’s difficult to explain how a tiny bit of limestone southwest of Sicily should hold such an interest for an American. I am nearly 65, but I fell in love with Malta sight unseen as a 10-year-old in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was a stamp collector and bought one of those cheap worldwide stamp packets, with one stamp showing Verdala Palace in Malta. Somehow it grabbed my interest, and a few years later I started reading about Malta until I had exhausted the local library collection. The chance discovery of a stamp led me to one of the most geographically and historically significant places in the world. Literally the crossroads of the Mediterranean, its Neolithic temples pre-date the Pyramids. It has been occupied by nearly every world power since the ancient Greeks. I’m a historian, for heaven’s sake. Why wouldn’t I be interested?

When I was 14 I read Cellini’s Autobiography. The rogue artist absolutely intrigued me. He lived in the mid-16th century at the time the Knights of St John defeated Suleiman the Magnificent’s Turks in the Great Siege of Malta. It was the greatest holy war of all time and may have saved Europe from occupation by the Turks. Voilà. I was hooked. And, as a young college student, I decided I wanted to write a novel set in Malta, involving Cellini and the Great Siege. I even had a punch-line. It just took a while.

Meanwhile, I turned my stamp collection into a business, which I named Maltalately (for Malta philately).

I finally had a finished draft of the novel in 1985. An agency decided to represent it but was unable to find a publisher. The manuscript went back on my shelf to languish for nearly 10 years before I finally came to Malta for the first time at age 54. I stayed at a bargain accommodation, the Soleado Guest House in Sliema. What a great location to set the novel! I dusted off the manuscript and started again. My first change was to give the sidekick Rick, my hero, a sex change. My middle-aged male cab driver was now a sexy young woman. The real-life manager of the Soleado, Joey Bugeja, also got a gender change to become the fictional Josefina. How could I miss?

The events of 11 September 2001, although tragic, provided another powerful plotline, since Malta has close economic ties with Libya. I should be able to polish the book off in a couple of months, I thought.

Not! Things still didn’t fit together quite right. In September of 2003 I enlisted the help of a musician who I met while I was selling postcards. He liked thrillers and had a keen ear for the music of language and a discerning eye for the continuity of my story. By the beginning of 2004 I had what I thought was a final draft. Then I heard about the North African boat people who were landing in Malta. Wow. Now all I had to do was tie Benvenuto Cellini to Suleiman the Magnificent, add in a plot from World War II, and combine that with modern-day terrorists and refugees. What could be simpler? Even Snoopy could do it from his doghouse rooftop.

Somehow I did it. And according to my readers, successfully. Why Malta? Because there is no other place in world where the story would make sense.

The other answer to “Why Malta” I found in a quote in Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence. It could have been written for me and my experience with Malta.

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them among certain surroundings, but they have always nostalgia for a home they know not… Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. At last he finds rest.”

For a sample chapter of The Cellini Masterpiece and reviews from readers, go to www.cmasterpiece.com The book can be purchased on-line, from the Soleado Guest House, 2133 4415 or in bookstores in Malta.