`There are many cauldrons seething in the world today but this one is a monster...'

It started in California. A body washed ashore is found by Paula Grey. Weeks later, Bob Newman discovers a woman's body floating into the coast of Cornwall. Shown a photograph, Paula is stunned to realise it is the same woman she hauled out of the Pacific, six thousand miles away.

Tweed senses a worldwide menace, tracks Vincent Bernard Moloch, creator of AMBECO, largest conglomerate on the planet. Why have strange domes appeared, overlooking the ocean off California? Who is `Vanity' Richmond, the woman with no identity, companion to Moloch?

What links expatriates in California to a similar community in Cornwall? A tremor of panic shatters London, Washington. Tweed encounters the formidable Mrs Benyon, Joel Brand, an Armenian, `Vanity' Richmond and Linda Standish, private investigator. One is murdered by a mysterious exterminator, The Accountant.

The temp accelerates - Paula and Newman investigate AMBECO. Crisis explodes into titanic catastrophe - part of a continent collapses into the ocean. The final battle detonates in Cornwall.