Colin Forbes Book Review The Cauldron
Before giving you my views on this book, I have read 3 of Colin Forbes’ books with the same characters: Tweed and Company to get a better idea of the characters. After reading all three books, I must say that I am not a fan of Colin Forbes.
The Cauldron is a complicated story with too many plot holes, incredible characters, and terrible dialogue. Not to mention the large number of misspellings in all of his books. Whoever does the proofreading or editing should be fired!
Main characters:
Tweed – head of a secret British organization that hunts down terrorists and baddies.
Paula gray – Tweed’s assistant, Tweed’s beautiful, smart and special friend
Bob newman – Tweed and Paula’s assistant
Marler – sniper, world champion marksman and part of the Tweed team
Bernard Moloch – billionaire industrialist intending to blow up the California coast
Minions galore – a lot of unsavory characters who seemed to be very smart, but never managed to do anything right. More like “key police”.
Plot:
Paula Gray finds a body off the coast of California and a few weeks later Bob Newman finds another similar body off the coast of Cornwall in England. Only to find out they look like the same woman? Hmm … how strange and how convenient.
Meanwhile, mega billionaire Bernard Moloch and his “genius seismologist brother” have devised a plan to use a newly created explosive called Xenobium to blow the California coastline into the ocean with seismic blasts.
After they prove how effective it is, they plan to sell it to Middle Eastern countries. Now they travel between Britain and California gathering evidence. They stay in the same hotels and meet the same people in both hotels and no one seems to find that strange. Look, Vanity is here too. And how strange, look well, old Cornish Weatherby, though broke, is on vacation in California.
Even after finding out what is going to happen they never seem to take action and some of the clandestine activities they use, a phone booth in the city and not in the hotel, are so silly as everyone knows they are government agents and even Molloch invites. them to have “tea”.
The whole story is so poorly 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, as I found the same flaws with the other books. Unfortunately, I have 6 more of his books in my library, which won’t be read unless I’m really desperate.