The Cauldron by Colin Forbes Book Review
Before I give you my views on this book, I have now read 3 of Colin Forbes’s books with the same characters: Tweed and Company in order to get a better feel for the characters. After reading all three books, I have to say I am not a Colin Forbes fan.
The Cauldron is a convoluted story with too many holes in the plot line, unbelievable characters and terrible dialogue. That is not too mention the plethora of spelling errors in all his books. Whoever does the editing or proofreading should be fired!
Main Characters:
Tweed – head of a secret British organization that chases down terrorists and bad guys.
Paula Grey – Tweed assistant, beautiful, intelligent and special friend of Tweed
Bob Newman – assistant to Tweed and Paula
Marler – sniper, world champion shooter and part of the Tweed team
Bernard Moloch – billionaire industrialist intent on blowing up the coast of California
Henchman galore – lots of unsavoury characters who seemed to be very clever, but can never manage to do anything right. More like “keystone cops”.
Plot:
A body is found off the coast of California by Paula Grey and a few weeks later another similar body is found by Bob Newman off the coast of Cornwall in England. Only to discover they look like the same woman? Hmm… how odd and how convenient.
Meanwhile, mega billionaire Bernard Moloch and his “genius seismologist brother” have conjured up a plan to use a newly created explosive called Xenobium to blow the coast of California into the ocean using seismic explosions.
After they show how effective it is, they plan to sell it to Middle East countries. Now they travel between Britain and California gathering evidence. They stay at the same hotels and meet the same people at both hotels and nobody seems to find that odd. Why, look Vanity is here too. And how odd, look good ole Weatherby from Cornwall, even though he is broke, is vacationing in California.
Even after they discover what is going to happen, they never seem to take action and some of the clandestine activities they use – a telephone box in town and not at the hotel – is so dumb since everyone knows they are government agents and even Molloch invites them over for “tea”.
The whole story is so badly put together that it took me weeks to finish this 484-page book. If told correctly, it could have been a nice 300-page story.
I cannot recommend this book or any of his other Tweed novels that I have read, since I found the same faults with the other books. Unfortunately, I have 6 more of his books in my library, which will go unread unless I am really desperate.
