Before I give you my take 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 have to say that I am not a fan of Colin Forbes.

The Cauldron is a convoluted story with too many plot holes, amazing characters, and terrible dialogue. That’s not to mention the plethora of misspellings in all of his books. Whoever does the editing or review should be fired!

Main characters:

Tweed – head of a secret British organization that hunts down terrorists and bad guys.

paula gray – Tweed’s assistant, beautiful, intelligent and special friend of Tweed

bob newman – Tweed and Paula’s assistant

marler – sniper, world champion marksman and part of the Tweed team

Bernardo Moloch – a billionaire industrialist’s attempt to blow up the California coast

henchman galore – Lots of nasty characters who seem to be very smart, but never get anything right. More like “keystone cops.”

Plot:

Paula Gray finds a body off the California coast, and a few weeks later, another similar body is found off the Cornish coast in England by Bob Newman. Only to find out that they look like the same woman? Hmm… how strange and how convenient.

Meanwhile, mega billionaire Bernard Moloch and his “seismologist genius brother” have hatched a plan to use a newly created explosive called Xenobium to blast the California coastline into the ocean using seismic blasts.

After they prove how effective it is, they plan to sell it to Middle Eastern countries. Now they travel between Great Britain and California collecting 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, old Weatherby from Cornwall looks good, even though he’s broke, he’s on holiday 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 the hotel) are so silly since everyone knows they are government agents and even Molloch invites them over for “tea”.

The whole story is so poorly organized 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 in the other books. Unfortunately, I have 6 more of his books in my library, which won’t be read unless I’m really desperate.