I picked up this Colin Forbes book as it was on Kindle Unlimited. All my fiction reads are mostly borrowed on Kindle Unlimited… why buy a one time read :).
Terminal – Summary
This book is set in 1984, truly “back in the day”. We start by reading about a patient running out into the open at a Swiss clinic. Then the scene shifts to a smuggler who brings something in a suitcase into Switzerland and in the process kills a couple of people. Enters Bob Newman, a world renowned journalist and his girlfriend Nancy.
Nancy’s uber rich grandfather has been sent to the Swiss clinic by her sister without any consultation with Nancy, who herself is a doctor. She is very keen to go and see her grandfather and Bob Newman tags along or so it seems initially.
Slowly the reader realises that Bob Newman seems more like a spy rather than a journalist. His behaviour changes towards Nancy as soon as they land in Switzerland and she too has secrets that are spilled right at the end. The deputy director of British Intelligence Tweed is also interested in the exclusive Swiss Clinic.
The plot unwinds with a lot of twists and turns besides a body count that keeps going up. The word Terminal pops up every now and then to justify the title.
Finally we understand that the exclusive Swiss clinic is conducting experiments on human guinea pigs, (read rich, terminally ill) to test the efficacy of some Russian made gas masks against a new gas that has been produced in Switzerland. We read about two groups of Swiss patriots having diametrically opposite views about the famed Swiss neutrality.
The ending seems a but hurried… suddenly Bob Newman and Nancy are no longer a couple, Blanche plays messenger to both Bob and Tweed, the Swiss clinic is shut down, the CIA agent or ex-agent Foley seems to have been hired by Nancy and the good Swiss army Rene Lachenal commits suicide.
It’s an interesting book and quite fast paced. In the new world, with cellphones, drones and satellites, this whole book would be just a few pages long.
You can read the book if you feel nostalgic for an old world spy story, if not, give it a miss.
My rating – 3/5