The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) are back. This time Tweed is going back to his roots as an investigator with Scotland Yard looking into a vicious double murder of two women in London. Taking the investigation off the apparently inept Chief Inspector Reebeck, who has already arrested the wrong person, he and the team follow clues and suspects into a remote village and the town of Gunners Gorge. The whole area is controlled by Lord Bullerton whose wife died mysteriously, swept into the Falls running into the gorge.

With a dark history and more recent bloodshed, the town is soon visited by more death and violence. Against this, there is still the mystery of the two dead women in London, whose identities as well as their killer still remain anonymous. Lord Bullerton or "Pit Bull" seems somehow implicated, along with his apparently dysfunctional family. Reebeck and his initial suspect turn up in the town along with other sinister characters who fuel the increasingly oppressive atmosphere around Tweed and his team.

Rapidly escalating hostility puts Tweed, Paula and the rest of the team in the way of the dangerous Neville Guile and a team of lethal gunmen. Another bloody death and several close calls only serve to make Tweed more determined to find the perpetrator and understand why the killings, and characters linked with them, centre on Gunners Gorge and the moorlands around it.

THE SAVAGE GORGE is, like many of his bestsellers, somewhat formulaic and contains many inconsistencies or unexplained connections. However, it is an exceptionally entertaining story with explosive scenes, boat gun battles and car chases. Sadly this is his last book and with it (unless, like Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle, he gets ghost written) go Tweed and the gang. As a holiday reader of Colin Forbes thrillers I shall miss him and his characters.

Amanda Brown, England
May 2009