Unreleased (?) 1970s Destroyer Poster

From the Glorious Trash Archives: I just discovered this image on an old laptop of mine; looks like I saved it to the PC in February of 2012.  Per my note it was an unreleased Destroyer poster from the 1970s:

No idea where I got the image from, so apologies if I have stolen it from some other site.  However I just did a quick search on the image and could not find it anywhere.

I do not have any other info on the poster, so if any of you know anything about it, please share.  Clearly the art is by Destroyer cover artist Hector Garrido, and I bet it would have looked cool blown out to full poster size!

The Destroyer #38: Bay City Blast

The Destroyer #38: Bay City Blast, by Warren Murphy

October, 1979  Pinnacle Books

I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Destroyer, but I’ve been aware of this particular installment for years, as it features Remo and Chiun taking on spoofy parodies of the protagonists of other Pinnacle series: namely, The Executioner, The Butcher, and Death Merchant. But as ever Warren Murphy (writing solo this time, without early series co-writer Richard Sapir) is more focused on the “spoofy” nature, with hardly any focus on action. Despite the trappings, The Destroyer is a comedy series, and one must admit that Bay City Blast is occasionally very funny, even if it isn’t the “Pinnacle All-Stars” novel one might have preferred. (It still surprises me that Pinnacle editor Andy Ettinger never conceived of a one-shot that would’ve united all of the series protagonists in a big story, like a prefigure of Gold Eagle’s later Stony Man books.) 

First of all, I want to note that the long-limbed black beauty in a bikini with the submachine gun on Hector Garrido’s cover art does not exist in the actual novel. This of course is a bummer. But then, girls don’t much exist in The Destroyer. They are for the most part cipher-like, and never exploited as they would be in the typical men’s adventure novel, due to the sad fact that hero Remo Williams has zero in the way of a sex drive. As I’ve complained before, Remo’s more robot than man; Bay City Blast even features a “pretty” secretary (“pretty” being the extent of what Warren Murphy gives you in the exploitative goods) who constantly throws herself at Remo, and he remains disinterested – and also Remo goes without a woman for the entire book. Some men’s adventure progatonist! 

My assumption is the gal with the gun on the cover might be Garrido’s interpretation of Ruby Gonzales, who appears briefly in Bay City Blast and reports to Smitty, the boss of CURE. But she is fully clothed throughout and for the most part breaks into a building to check its security level; I get the impression Ruby has been in other volumes, but I’m by no means an expert on The Destroyer. So I could be wrong, but it just seemed to me that Ruby was an already-established character, and all told she’s only in the book for a few pages. 

I always rant and rave about The Destroyer and what I wish it was, but truth be told Warren Murphy is a good writer, and clearly has a good sense of humor – one that he’s able to convey via the narrative. We already know Bay City Blast will be funny from the start, when a mobbed-up “businessman” named Rocco Nobile moves into slummy Bay City, New Jersey, and promptly takes it over by blackmailing various dirty politicians. The humor comes in the recurring image of Rocco’s bodyguard constantly putting his hand in his pocket, and the dialog throughout is, as ever, pretty humorous. 

The biggest humor comes via The Eraser and The Rubout Squad, a subplot that comes out of nowhere but ultimately overtakes the narrative: this is the name of Murphy’s pseudo-Pinnacle squad. First there’s Sam Gregory, a gun manufacturer with dreams of taking on the Mafia and wiping it out with his own squad. To this end he recruits three men: Mark Tolan, a psychopath who was court martialed in ‘Nam for gunning down a village of women and children (the Mack Bolan parody); Al Baker, a guy with delusions of being a torpedo who has decided to go against the Syndicate, but in reality is just some loser who’s seen The Godfather too many times (the Butcher parody); and finally Nicholas Lizzard, a six-foot-five failed actor who is now a full-time drunk and whose biggest talent is dressing up in drag so that he can make himself look like “a six-foot-four woman” (the Richard Camellion parody, and the one Murphy seems to have the most fun with). 

Meanwhile Sam Gregory dubs himself “The Eraser,” and it is he who has the trademark bit of dropping broken pencils at scenes, a la Bolan’s marksman medals or The Penetrator’s arrow heads. My assumption is Gregory is intended as Murphy’s spoof of The Penetrator Mark Hardin, but other than the name and the broken pencils bit…the character seems to more be a parody of Don Pendleton. This is mostly because he is the one who plans the hits and also comes up with alliterative titles for them: first is “Bay City Blast,” and later the Eraser plans on others with similar, Pendleton-esque titles, like “Salinas Slaughter.” 

Murphy also has a lot of fun spoofing Mack Bolan via his psycho duplicate Mark Tolan; in Tolan’s scenes, Murphy recreates Don Pendleton’s style, down to the recurring “Yeahs” that punctuate the narrative. He even gets double bang for his spoofing buck with Tolan often vowing to “Live Huge,” parodying Bolan’s “Live Large.” I seem to recall Warren Murphy saying years ago in a Paperback Fanatic interview that he felt Pendleton’s ego was getting a little too large at the time, hence he had some fun mocking him in Bay City Blast. One can well imagine Don Pendleton being unsettled at how psychopathic his character is made to seem: Tolan, who names himself “The Exeterminator,” is a nutjob who is ready to explode at any moment, and indeed gleefully guns down children in Bay City Blast. 

But as mentioned it’s Nicholas Lizzard, the Richard Camellion spoof, who draws the most laughs. Curiously, Lizzard is presented as a roaring drunk who lives off vodka, making one wonder if Murphy was making any insinuations about Camellion’s creator, Joseph Rosenberger. Speaking of whom, Murphy does not mimic Rosenberger’s style in the Lizzard sections (but then, not many could), but he certainly makes Lizzard just as psycho as Tolan. The recurring humor here is very un-PC in today’s era, as Lizzard often dresses like a woman, but isn’t fooling anyone. This though is the extent of Lizzard’s schtick, other than the heavy drinking, so he isn’t a “cosmic lord of death” or whatever Richard Camellion was. 

As for The Baker, he’s nothing at all like the character he’s spoofing. Whereas Bucher the Butcher is a terse, cipher-like death machine, Al Baker is at heart a good-natured sort who is only in it for the money, and in fact harbors a lot of concern about the increasingly-violent nature of the Rubout Squad. Not that this subplot goes anywhere. Baker still takes part in the Squads raids on Bay City’s “underworld,” ie gunning down innocent men, women, and children. The latter I think is where Murphy goes a little too far in his black humor; the Rubout Squad shooting down prepubescent Chinese children in a “heroin factor” (really a fortune cookie bakery) doesn’t really elicit many chuckles. 

Remo and Chiun are often lost in the shuffle, but on the positive side Remo is treated with less scorn in this one. His opening sequence is pretty cool, and another indication of the comedy nature of the series, as he takes out a house filled with recently-freed criminals, killers and rapists who’d been put away but released by shady lawyers; humorously, all of them have hyphenated, Joe-Bob type names. But unlike The Executioner or any other Pinnacle series, it’s all played for laughs, with Remo easily and casually killing each of them off one by one, and becoming more concerned with where to put their cars after killing them. 

And that again brings me to my central issue with The Destroyer. Everything is so easy for Remo and Chiun that there’s no tension or drama or anything. Killing is simple for Remo. Along with the lack of sex drive, this makes Remo Williams an altogether poor men’s adventure protagonist, because you can’t really feel anything for him. Perhaps this is why Murphy and Sapir grafted on the “treat Remo like a fool” subtext, to try to make Remo more relatable. And also again the action scenes are not presented the way I prefer; as ever they are relayed via the impressions of the person about to be killed by Remo, with the reader never getting a good idea of what Remo is actually doing. 

So it’s the comedy that carries the story, with every sequence always devolving into satire or parody. Like when Remo and Chiun go fishing for vacation, and a great white shark chases them – Remo even referring to Jaws while it happens – and Chiun merely “calls” the shark with his fingers in the water and then kills it with a single blow. The climactic faceoff with the Rubout Squad is also fairly anticlimactic, with Murphy again returning to his standard trick of killing villains off-page, which is a big letdown. And even here Remo dispatches his enemies with such ease that the reader who actually wanted to see a pseudo “Pinnacle All-Stars” square-off will be mightily underwhelmed. Only Tolan really goes face-to-face with Remo, Murphy apparently wise enough to know his readers would expect a little more from him for his Bolan parody, at least. But even here it’s more for laughs, with Remo almost like a god up against Tolan. 

As for the plot, it moves quickly, and Murphy spends more time with the Rubout Squad bickering and bantering with each other before gunning down innocents in their war to “cleanse” Bay City. Meanwhile Remo and Chiun are called into act as bodyguards for Mayor Rocco Nobile, the mobbed-up bigwig who showed up in the opening pages; this subplot I thought was pretty cool, ie Nobile’s real intent in Bay City, but again Murphy sort of loses site of it as the book progresses. Even here it’s comedy, with Remo and Chiun just happening to get a hotel room right next door to the Rubout Squad, but neither party realizing it. There’s also comedy in the Eraser’s growing anger that the newspapers, for some mysterious reason, never report on the Rubout Squad’s hits. 

The ”climax” is on us before we realize it, and while it might not be the action spectacular you’d get in a more “straight” men’s adventure novel, it does feature the Eraser in a tank going down Main Street in Bay City. But the confrontation with the Rubout Squad is quick, anticlimactic, and mostly off-page, so I wouldn’t use Bay City Blast as an indication of how Remo Williams would fare against the Death Merchant, the Butcher, or the Executioner. But then, Warren Murphy presents Remo as so omnipotent that he’d probably handle the real deals just as easily as he does the spoofs. 

Murphy does score huge points for somehow seeing through the mists of time and describing what passes for a “journalist” in our miserable modern era. Murphy’s intent apparently is to spoof the hiring standards of The New York Post (this is during the section in which the Rubout Squad is incensed that their hits aren’t making it into the news), but little does Murphy realize that he’s describing what will be the required background for a “journalist” in a few decades: 

Overall though, Bay City Blast is fast-moving and fun, but again The Destroyer just isn’t my kind of men’s adventure series.

The Destroyer #17: Last War Dance

The Destroyer #17: Last War Dance, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy

October, 1974  Pinnacle Books

The Destroyer continues to grind my gears with another volume that goes heavy on the “comedy” but light on the action. This series so far seems to me like a ‘70s variation of those annoying “spy comedy” paperbacks that populated the book racks in the ‘60s, ie The Man From O.R.G.Y. and whatnot; ostensibly packaged as action, but really more just satires. And unfunny satires at that. 

This is not intended as an insult to authors Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy; they clearly had a formula that worked for them, and they turn in novels that read super fast. It’s just that their formula is not the series I want. As I say in practically every single Destroyer review I’ve written, I want my men’s adventure straight with no chaser. The concept of Remo “The Destroyer” Williams being a “Superman for the ‘70s” (per those Pinnacle house ads) is a very cool one; I want to see him tearing mobsters and etc apart with his bare hands. But damn it all to hell, Sapir and Murphy want to write a satire, or even a spoof; the action is always secondary to the humor. And what action does happen is even usually played for laughs. Even the sex is tame; for once Remo gets lucky, and it happens off-page. 

It’s the tone that most annoys me, though. The authors want their cake and to eat it too. Thus Last War Dance (published the month and year of my birth, btw) veers from spoof to moments in which Remo’s concerned the world is about to be destroyed via a super-secret nuclear weapon. And speaking of Remo, given the “funny” vibe of the series, he and Chiun come off like total assholes. I mean, their recurring schtick is Chiun is a racist and looks down on everyone who isn’t from his tiny village in Korea, and he’s always putting down Remo, and all he wants to do is watch his soap operas. This volume adds the bit that Chiun also wants to sell out his and Remo’s services to the USSR, as the Russians better appreciate professional assassins. As for Remo, he spends the novel tossing around innocent people – his intro even features him tearing the shirt off some random guy in the airport – and he does nothing “heroic” in the course of the book. For that matter, he even plans to hand over the girl he has sex with to some people who want to kill her. 

Well anyway, Last War Dance is very much in the ‘70s mold at least, in so far as the satire goes – this one’s on the same level as The Thirteen Bracelets in its focus on making fun of races. This time it’s American Indians (or Native Americans, if you prefer), and the authors trot out all the usual stereotypes – they’re a bunch of lazy drunks, etc. There’s also a recurring “joke” that a white woman who is devoted to their cause is constantly being told by them to shut up and then getting punched in the face. (Making it worse, this is of course the woman Remo has sex with…and then plans to hand over to her would-be killers.) You all should know I’m not someone who gets worked up over accusations of “misogyny” in old pulp paperbacks, but even I got disgruntled with this shit. Ultimately though it was just another indication of how little I like The Destroyer. 

The novel opens making you think it will be more on the level than it really is; it’s the early 1960s and a group of military contractors are digging up missile sites in Montana. They uncover the remains of an Indian massacre and go on strike. A military general flies in and explains to them that this is pretty much ancient history: the massacre occurred in 1873, and indeed a monument will be erected commemorating the horrendous act – the Wounded Elk Masssacre. The workers go on with the dig, and then we have some dark stuff where this general has an agency hitman kill off the head contract worker on the site, and then the general kills the hitman. All to keep the location of this particular site as secret as possible. 

We then flash forward to 1973 and this general, Van Riker, is retired, under the assumption his secret is safe. There under the Wounded Elk monument he has stashed the Cassandra, a mega-powerful nuclear bomb of his own creation that could change the tide of the Cold War. It’s so powerful that it could wipe out several states if it were to be set loose. Unfortunately for Van Riker, activist American Indians are now protesting at the monument, which they intend to blow up. This could of course set off the Cassandra. Oh, and they’re not even Indians, we’re informed; many of them are young whites who are just looking for the latest activism to get involved in. The actual American Indians live across town and are too busy getting drunk and laying around and have no interest in the protests. In fact they have a serious grudge against the “fake Indians” who are over protesting at the monument. 

Sapir and Murphy skewer the sentiments of the radicals, with them going on about America being a racist country and founded on cultural genocide and etc for the TV cameras. At the same time it kind of wrankled, as how could the authors know that in a few decades such bullshit would make for the tenets of Critical Race Theory? They’re playing all this for laughs, as the “Indians” are of course a moronic lot who just want to blow stuff up and make a fuss to get on TV. Chief among them (so to speak) is Lynn Cosgrove, aka “Burning Star,” a blonde-haired actress who is known for latching on to the latest activist fads. She’s even written a book about the Wounded Elk massacre, the authors spoofing Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. 

Lynn is the aformentioned recipient of the slaps and punches in that unfunny recurring “joke” the authors continue with throughout the entire book. Even Remo, who ingratiates himself into the temporary trust of the Indian radicals (by promising them free food and booze, naturally), gets in on the act, telling her to shut up and hitting her. Sometimes she’s knocked out, sometimes we’re informed of her “swollen lips.” It’s not funny at all and it makes you wonder how two authors could think it was. But regardless Remo does have the belated realization that he has the hots for Lynn; he notices her nice rack beneath her deerskin tunic, and at one point pulls her aside and tells her he wants to do it. This is the first I’ve ever seen Remo display a libido. He uses his Sinanju training to touch a few sensitive spots and Lynn’s very ready for the act…the entirety of which is relayed as, “And Remo made love to her.” 

The action scenes are just as nondescript. Actually they aren’t even action scenes. Once again the authors relay everything from the perspective of Remo’s victims; suddenly they’ll find thesmselves flying through the air, or getting their necks broken, or whatever. One memorable bit has Remo shoving a guy headfirst into a toilet. But then that’s the thing. Remo is super brutal here, needlessly so. He hopelessly outmatches these befuddled would-be radicals, and thus comes off as more sadistic and evil than they are. Again, this is the problem with playing everything for laughs; the bad guys don’t even seem like bad guys, and the “heroes” seem like cruel bullies. Also, given the jokey vibe of the entire novel, it’s especially hard to buy the periodic parts where Remo will worry that the Cassandra might accidentally be blown up. There’s absolutely no tension in the entire novel, and the authors’ attempt to add some comes off like half-assed catering to the imprint’s desire for an “action” novel. 

To their credit, Sapir and Murphy stick with this piss-poor setup for the entire novel; Remo tries to prevent the radicals from destroying the monument (beating and killing some of them as necessary), then spends more time trying to track down a 155 mm cannon one of the locals intends to use to kill all the radicals. And Remo isn’t trying to find the cannon to save the radicals (indeed as mentioned he even plans at one point to turn them all – including Lynn! – over to the locals), it’s just that Van Riker has informed him a cannon of such power could also set off the Cassandra. There’s also another time-filler subplot about a Russian agent who has been hunting for the Cassandra for decades, and now has deduced it’s here in Montana; he is the one Chiun considers selling the services of Sinanju to. 

Speaking of which, the Sinanju stuff is really the only thing I like about The Destroyer (even the Remo-Chiun bickering is annoying me now). This time we learn that Remo exercises entirely mentally; there’s a part where he stretches out in bed, imagines himself in a wooded area, and “runs” for several minutes, getting his heart pounding. We also get a brief explanation of how Remo was recruited into Sinanju, with Van Riker acting as the new guy being brought into the bizarre fold of CURE…but then that’s another example of the clumsy vibe of this series. Because CURE is top secret of course and anyone who learns about it must die. Once again this makes our “heroes” seem more like villains – nothing like killing off the guy you’ve been working with for the entire novel. But then again it’s a nice payoff, given how Van Riker just as ruthlessly enforced his own secrecy at the beginning of the novel. 

Anyway, Last War Dance is certainly my least favorite volume of The Destroyer yet. But then again I haven’t liked any of them. Readers of the day must’ve felt differently, though, at least judging from the cover blurb – was The Destroyer really “America’s bestselling action series?” Even more so than The Executioner?

The Destroyer #13: Acid Rock

The Destroyer #13: Acid Rock, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
December, 1973  Pinnacle Books

I enjoyed this thirteenth volume of The Destroyer a bit more than the others I’ve read, with the caveat that once again Sapir and Murphy have turned in a darkly comic satire with very, very little in the way of action –now that I think of it, there isn’t really a single action scene in the novel, other than a few quick “fights” in which superhuman protagonists Remo and Chiun take out their opponents practically between sentences. That being said, Remo does get laid in this one, so there’s that. Of course he doesn’t even enjoy it, but you take what you can get in The Destroyer.

I decided to check this one out because I’ve been on a rock novel kick lately. Be warned though that the authors only deal with the actual rock stuff intermittently, with more focus placed on the wacky would-be assassins who try to kill the teen girl Remo and Chiun are protecting. And also the authors mix up their eras…Acid Rock sort of combines the anti-Establisment, “up against the wall” vibe of Woodstock and other late ‘60s/early ‘70s rock festivals with early ‘70s sleazeball horror-rock. Because the main rock character in the novel – Maggot – is clearly an Alice Cooper stand-in, but hippies go to his gigs and Hell’s Angels provide the security. 

As usual it comes down to the goofy relationship between Remo and his “Little Father” Chiun, who, despite being the “wizened old Oriental” of cliché, is really just a petty old prick. There’s a lot of fun rapport between the two this time around, and some memorable bits of acidic wisdom from Chiun, my favorite being his commentary on US highways: “It must have taken much planning to build roads that are too big for light traffic and too small for heavy traffic.” Also humorous is his response to Remo’s argument that Chiun doesn’t understand the American counterculture movement: “How can you oppose something that does not exist?”

Anyway this one’s really more about the cast of assassins out to collect the bounty on the head of young Vickie Stoner, a brain-fried groupie type whose entire raison d’etre is to “ball that Maggot.” Vickie’s dad is an millionaire who, per Vickie, is in cahoots with the Russians on a grain deal that could topple the US economy or somesuch. Vickie has come forward as a witness against her own dad, and thus has incurred an open contract – something so mythical that even the FBI agent initially ordered to protect her doesn’t believe it exists. Of course he’s killed in a failed attempt to capture Vickie, and when hundreds of thousands of dollars are delivered at the funeral of the would-be assassins, it’s clear that someone out there is actually going to pay out the open contract on Vickie’s head.

All this catches the interest of Remo and Chiun’s boss, and posthaste they’re ordered to descend upon the acid rock scene and protect the young groupie chick. The recurring (and annoying) joke of Acid Rock is that addle-headed Vickie keeps eluding everyone, from her would-be protectors to her would-be killers. The rock novel stuff only factors into the beginning and end of the book, and as mentioned has more to do with the whole “shock rock” thing of Alice Cooper than anything else – Maggot even has his own guillotine on the stage. And since nothing’s sacred to our authors, Maggot is really a mild-mannered germophone named Calvin Cadwalder who just poses as Maggot.

And that’s really the thing about The Destroyer that can get annoying after a while…it really is a satire in the Swiftian sense, in that Sapir and Murphy have an axe to grind about virtually everything. So what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t a traditional action series in the vein of The Executioner, such that one of the highpoints is Remo taking advantage of an open tryout with the Atlanta Eagles and wiping out virtually the entire team. But honestly there’s no action in the traditional sense, and as with the other volumes I’ve read, when Remo does fight someone it’s always relayed from that person’s point of view, so that we don’t even read what the hell Remo’s doing…just the victim’s experiences as he suddenly finds his arms no longer working or his heart about to exlode or something.

But one of those recurring jokes is that Remo and Chiun are totally out of sorts with the rock festival crowd, though there is some funny stuff in that the vapid hippie types instantly assume Chiun, in his flowing robes, is “someone,” and flock to him like the Maharishi. This has a nice cap off in the finale, in which Chiun preaches to a group of hippies at a big Maggot festival. But there is of course plenty of venomous condemnations of the gullible hippies in these parts, though Sapir and Murphy don’t go as far with it as they could. I’m not exagerrating when I say the rock festival stuff is just a small percentage of the narrative, because in reality more of the running time is devoted to the oddjob assassins who try to collect on that open bounty.

Like Willie the Bomb Bombella, who takes up a bit of the narrative – before being perfunctorily killed by Remo. This indeed proves to be the gist of Acid Rock, folks; we get long, almost digressive sequences from the POVs of the various assassins, who either kill each other off or are casually killed by Remo – for once again, the guy’s such a superman that there’s zero drama or tension. This time the authors even take the schtick too far, as Remo is caught in an exploding car and flies out of it unscathed. It’s more like something out of Looney Tunes, and yes it really happens in the novel – again, I’m not exaggerating. The authors seem to hate everything about the action genre, a hatred which appears to extend to readers looking for a vicarious thrill.

Oh and speaking of which, Remo gets laid this time – by Vickie. And like I mentioned in my previous review, our hero lacks a sex drive, so basically he bangs Vickie to shut her up…and doesn’t even enjoy it, even though we’re informed she gets off ultra-royally. There are no juicy details, of course, but Remo goes at her a few times…and tries not to fall asleep. I mean I know it’s all supposed to be humorous, a piss-take on the basic action-adventure model, but the thing is, I like the basic action-adventure model. I enjoy it. I always think how great this series could’ve been if it just handled things on the level…Sapir and Murphy could’ve retained their piss-taking vibe, but toned it down a little, indeed made it more subtle, while still doling out the expected men’s adventure tropes without the satiric trimmings. Now that I think of it, that would’ve been more challenging for them, and perhaps more rewarding – to write the series “on the level,” as it were, with hidden layers of satire. Only a few men’s adventure series have achieved this – off the top of my head: Traveler, The Specialist, Doomsday Warrior, Phoenix, and especially The Hitman.

The authors (but I suspect the majority of this one was courtesy Murphy alone) stomp on modern sensibilities with the character of Abdul Hareem Barenga (aka Tyrone Jackson), a Black Panther type who attempts to cash in on the open contract. The stuff with Barenga is hardcore racist with zero in the way of apology – he’s a complete idiot with zero morals, and talks like he walked out of the crudest of Blaxploitation flicks. Murphy – and again I suspect this is mostly his work, given that later volumes apparently dip into racial caricatures – even goes to the trouble of mention the rolling whites of his eyes when a terrified Barenga runs away from Chiun – “Feet get moving!”

But the assassins who get by far the most narrative time are the Nilsson brothers, Lhasa and Gunner. Part of their own assassin clan – one that tangled with the House of Sinanju centuries ago – these are the last surviving two, one being a big game hunter and the other an old doctor. The authors try real hard to make the reader give a shit about them and wonder if Remo and Chiun will have a chance…as if forgetting that they had Remo take on an entire football team and fly out of an exploding car. But it does go on, with the Nilsson brothers taking up way too much of the running time. And they don’t even have their own special powers, per se, like the beyond-ninja skills of Sinanju; rather, they just rely on handguns. Pretty lame.

The rock material comes and goes, mostly relayed through Vickie and her single-minded quest to “ball that Maggot.” I started to have déjà vu, flashing back to the equally-annoying Lori Thomas in The Scene. But Vickie’s a bit more of a fun character, mostly due to her interractions with Remo and Chiun. As mentioned Remo blows her mind with some undescribed sex, so Vickie figures “that old Oriental” will probably be even better in the sack. Unfortunately she interrupts Chiun’s soap operas, and he nearly kills her, knocking her into the next room. Remo has to use martial arts skills to get her heart beating again.

This sort of “sadism played for comedy” seems to be a recurring element in the early volumes. For example, later in the novel Remo nearly kills the aforementioned Barenga, taking out his anger on him with a devastating strike – and mind you, Remo isn’t even aware that Barenga’s one of the would-be assassins. He just happens to run into him as Barenga is running away from Chiun’s floor in the hotel. Later Remo momentarily plans to toss a little dog down an elevator shaft as part of a split-second decision to give another would-be assassin a Viking funeral, but is only stopped by the sudden appearance of the dog’s owner. But there’s no indication that Remo would’ve changed his mind.

And even Maggot turns out to be a total chump, a germophobe who could probably give Howard Hughes some pointers. We’re supposed to laugh of course that he goes into concert in a white jumpsuit with bloody raw meat dangling from his neck. Despite being a hard rocker he has the mind and personality of an accountant, and this ultimately is what gets Vickie in his bed – Maggot of course turns down her constant offers of sex, given the germ-exchange that would be involved in such an act. But when Vickie starts casually tossing market predictions, gleaned from her millionaire enterprenneur dad, Maggot finally becomes excited.

The climax occurs at one of Maggot’s rock festivals; Lhasa Nelson stalking Remo and Chiun while keeping Vickie, who now is engaged to Maggot, in his sights. The highlight here though as usual has nothing to do with the action; Chiun begins discoursing to a flock of hippies, giving Remo subtle messages about the lurking presence of Lhasa in his speech. This leads to a humorously-unclimactic finale in which, despite the authors’s best attempts to build suspense that Lhasa might kill Vickie as well as our heroes, it all again comes down to a quick strike that’s written from the perspective of the victim – I don’t think I’ve yet encountered the phrase “Remo kicked him” or the like in any of these Destroyer books I’ve read.

But as mentioned this time I tried to let go of any such expectations and enjoyed the book for the goofy satire it is. The Remo-Chiun interplay was as fun as ever, and Remo taking on the pro football team was also very memorable. However the digressive stuff on the various would-be assassins got to be a drag after awhile, and the “mystery” of who ordered the open contract was lame, because it was obvious from the first chapter of the book.

The Destroyer #15: Murder Ward

The Destroyer #15: Murder Ward, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
April, 1974  Pinnacle Books

If anything, this fifteenth volume of The Destroyer has confirmed my dislike of this particular series. While I know it has its loyal fans, and while I also know the series is better-written than the genre average, with more care to world-building and characterization, I still find that it grates on my nerves. Once again the authors focus on comedy and goofy situations in this “bestselling action series;” you can almost sense them sneering at those who have come looking for typical Pinnacle Books fare.

Occuring over the Christmas season, Murder Ward does not feature the most outlandish plot. Indeed one wonders why CURE has even sent its two superhuman assassins on this particular assignment. My friends, the villains of the piece are a pair of medical professionals who are killing patients on the operating table either as contract hits or so as to reap their assets once they’re dead. This plot alone is enough to remind us that The Destroyer lives in its own realm, one much different than the average Pinnacle offering. Even sadder is that this is the plot throughout; there’s no eleventh hour revelation of a grander scheme or anything. It’s just Remo and Chiun up against an alcoholic anasthesiologist and a sexy administrative assistant. 

The first recurring joke concerns the season itself – Chiun you see does not recognize Christmas. No, it’s the “Feast of the Pig” so far as Sinanju goes, and for his gift Chiun wants Barbara Streisand. He’s given Remo a gift of his own, a Christmas tree of his own making, which Remo considers nothing more than a “bush with tennis balls” on it. This joke is played out through the duration of Murder Ward. As usual, the man factor in the book – indeed, the main reason to read the series – is the bickering and bantering between our two lead characters.

In a way, The Destroyer is kind of sad. Remo Williams was raised in an orphanage, and after being “killed” in the line of police duty he went through a grueling decade of training. Yet the bond between Remo and his “little father” Chiun is one of contention, disagreement, and bickering. Only in moments of stress will you see their “true feelings” for one another when they go to each other’s aid, but then it’s right back to the venomous banter. Even Harold Smith, their “lemony” boss at CURE, treats Remo with disrespect, looking down his nose at him. Remo has no friends and encounters hostility and rudeness wherever he goes. I mean I’m not asking for warm-hearted sentiment, but it gets to be annoying after awhile. Even Richard Camellion had friends!

The mundane plot doesn’t help matters. Operating out of the Robler Clinic near Baltimore, a doctor named Daniel Demmet and a sexy and insatiable redhead named Kathy Hahl are knocking off patients; Demmet gives them just enough of a dose to kill them. We see him at work in an opening section which will have the reader swearing to never go to a hospital again. The expected bitterness of the Destroyer authors is stronger than typical throughout Murder Ward; my guess is one of them must’ve had a bad run-in with a doctor prior to writing this book. The medical industry does not come off very well at all.

Remo and Chiun, relaxing in San Francisco, are called in by Smith because IRS agents have been dying “random” deaths recently, and CURE wants to know if it’s part of some plot. Remo is assigned to shadow Nathind David Wilberforce of Scranton, a dyed-in-the-wool IRS agent in his 40s who lives with his overbearing mother. You guessed it, Wilberforce treats Remo with hostility and Mrs. Wilberforce, an ox of a woman, literally tries to throw him out of her house. Remo mocks the two while inspecting the perimeter and figuring out where the next attack will occur, but you don’t get any chuckles out of Remo’s taunts, because all of the characters are unlikable and thus you can’t really empathize with anyone.

Also as expected, when the “action” scenes finally go down, they’re over in a flash…and, same as always, they’re told from the perspective of the thugs getting killed. Over and over again it’s the same in this series; when Remo goes into action the authors hop into the perspective of the thug in question, and we read as he sees the blur of Remo’s hands and feels something wet on his head, and next thing he knows he’s missing an ear. Or he’ll see a blur as Chiun moves and then the thug will be falling down, going to sleep forever. It’s like that over and over. Never once do we get to read an action scene from Remo or Chiun’s perspective. It’s very frustrating.

Anyway, we get an “action scene” where Remo takes out some thugs who come to the Wilberforce house late at night; he tortures them and then works his way up the chain to the top employer behind the hit. Again, each and every scene here follows the same format as above; the authors will jump into the perspective of either a thug or someone at the mercy of the thugs as Remo appears, extracts his intel, and then kills the thugs. The action is played more for comedy. Right on cue, the “feast of the pig” joke comes back up, Remo wishing his victims a happy holiday before he kills them. There is no danger for Remo and thus no reader investment. Remo, per the ad in the back of the book, is a “superman of the ‘70s.”

Luckily, the authors are slightly more exploitative in the sex scenes. Kathy Hahl is as mentioned insatiable, however men are unable to last longer than ten seconds with her due to an “internal movement” she can perform during the act. We see this in action as she seduces a Mafia don who tries to hire her to kill Wilberforce. It’s not hardcore porn but it’s more descriptive than what you’d read in a few other men’s adventure novels of the day; the authors do enjoy their female villains, and thus Kathy is so evil that she doses the don with an experimental drug that accelerates his aging. When Remo, having worked his way up the chain, finally finds the man behind the would-be Wilberforce killers, the don is an emaciated skeleton about to die anyway.

Meanwhile, Wilberforce gets sick, goes to the Robler Clinic…and is killed anyway! Next old Mrs. Robler is dosed by that aging drug, Dr. Demmet using the same dosing-during-sex trick as Kathy Hahl. The novel goes just where you expected it would as Remo and Chiun check into the Robler clinic, CURE having determined it’s the likely culprit behind the recent murders. Chiun poses as “Dr. Park” and Remo is a wealthy nutcase named “Mr. Williams.” Some of this material is slightly funny, particularly Chiun’s attempts at acting like an arrogant doctor.

But then, much of it’s pretty grating, like an overlong part where Remo, dressed in stolen doctor’s garb, wanders the halls and offers bullshit medical advice. It doesn’t help matters that Chiun does the exact same thing in a later sequence. But that’s pretty much the whole kit and kaboodle, folks; our heroes just wander around the clinic and try to figure out what’s going on. When Remo discovers a locked room with aged animals, animals with recent birthdates, he slowly puts a few pieces together – not that Smith or Chiun believe him.

Given the early mention that Kathy Hahl has never met a man who can last with her – indeed, during her random bouts of sex with Dr. Demmet she actually counts off the seconds until he climaxes – the reader knows that Remo will give her a run for her money. And when Remo sees her he thinks she’s gorgeous, but at the same time regrets that he no longer takes pleasure in sex(!?). No, we are informed that during that decade-long training “Chiun had robbed [Remo] of the pleasure of sex. Sex was just another discipline, a skill to be learned.” This is our hero, people. A remorseless killing machine who doesn’t even have a sex drive.

Well anyway, the two still go at it; Kathy Hahl, her attempts to have Remo killed having failed, attempts to escape. Remo, himself having been dosed by the aging drug – the one effective scene in the novel, in which Chiun rushes to Remo’s aid and coaches him how to expel the poison – tracks her down and gives it to her while she’s bent over a filing cabinet. Does the Destroyer last more than ten seconds? Of course he does – not that he gets any pleasure out of it. Indeed, the authors go to the trouble of informing us that he doesn’t even bother to climax; but Kathy Hahl has, over and over again.

Meanwhile in a display of his own sadism Remo has coated his member with that aging serum! He taunts Kathy as she begins to visibly age, then locks her in her office and walks away, leaving her to die a horrifying death! Meanwhile Chiun has taken out the two thugs who poisoned Remo in the first place – you guessed it, another “action scene” relegated from the perspectives of the thugs as Chiun kills them. And that’s what passes for a climactic action scene; the authors again show their true colors with more focus placed on the recurring “Christmas/Feast of the Pig” joke in the last pages.

So anyway, I can’t say I much like The Destroyer. I’ve yet to read a volume that’s really grabbed me. I have many more installments, though, so I’ll keep checking them out. Who knows, maybe eventually I’ll begin to see things the other way around and enjoy the series for what it is: a dark spoof of the action genre. But for now I prefer my pulp straight with no chaser.

The Destroyer #5: Dr. Quake

The Destroyer #5: Dr. Quake, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
September, 1972  Pinnacle Books

As I’ve mentioned many times, I have a sick fondness for female villains, the more evil and depraved the better. A frequent commenter named Grant shares my fondness for these pulpy characters, and has often stated that this fifth volume of The Destroyer features some of the best female villains ever. So, when I came across a copy of the book in a used bookstore during a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I snatched it right up.

And while this is easily my favorite volume of the series I’ve yet read, Dr. Quake pretty much encapsulates why I so much prefer other men’s adventure series to The Destroyer. For once again authors Sapir and Murphy have taken a pulpy concept and have proven their reluctance to actually write a pulpy novel – rather, Dr. Quake is the expected satirical, spoofy sort of romp the series is known for.

To be sure, I enjoy this series, but then, I look at that cover, read the back cover description about a mad scientist named Floren blackmailing California with his earthquake device, and wonder what a true pulpster like Manning Lee Stokes might’ve done with it. Instead, Murphy and Sapir put more focus on the bumbling minor characters of the tale, with protagonists Remo Williams and Chiun reduced to almost walk-on roles, and the pulpy stuff is for the most part absent. There isn’t even much sex or violence.

Like #10: Terror Squad, this volume walks an uneasy line between light-hearted spoofery and unexpected savagery, though not to the extent of that later volume. Instead, it’s more satirical for the most part, presaging the direction the series would eventually take. What it’s missing is the customary Remo/Chiun banter; there’s some of it here, but not as much as one would expect. Instead, too much narrative time is given over to loutish, oafish Sheriff Wade Wyatt, who we soon learn is somehow involved with the earthquakes that have been hitting the small Californian town of San Aquino.

A handful of rich men in the city are being blackmailed by some unknown person or persons to hand over a monthly payment of $1,000, or the earthquakes will get bigger and bigger. When one of the men goes to D.C. to talk to someone in the government, he soon ends up dead, and gorily so, his corpse found in a San Aquino hotel with his intestines spilling out of his mouth, as if he’s been crushed. But gradually his D.C. contact gets the attention of CURE, the ultra-secret organization for which Remo Williams serves.

Remo isn’t nearly as satiric or cynical in this early volume, and seems to take his job somewhat seriously. But then, it’s not like he rushes into the fray like any other self-respecting men’s adventure protagonist would. Instead Remo comes into San Aquino posing as the possibly-gay new owner of the company which was previously owned by the murdered man. His goal is to get blackmailed like the other wealthy men are, so he can suss out who is behind the earthquakes.

But still, the authors focus more on Sheriff Wyatt, who comes off like your cliched small town sheriff, with all the expected posturing and ranting, and quickly grates on your nerves. Remo doesn’t get much narrative space, and Chiun hardly any at all. We also get lots of stuff about a group of local Mafioso who are looking to break in on this blackmailing scheme. Only when they try to move in on Remo does the novel really deliver any action, with Remo of course making incredibly short work of them.

Pinnacle hyped Remo as “the super man of the ‘70s” in their advertisements for The Destroyer, and the truth of that slogan only hit me with this installment. It’s exactly correct; Remo is basically the men’s adventure version of Superman, so fast, strong, and deadly that no mere mortal stands a chance against him. And while this is a cool concept, it does tend to rob the series of much tension in the few action scenes, as you know Remo can kill hordes of men without breaking a sweat.

Another thing that bugs me is how the action scenes are actually written. They’re generally never from Remo’s perspective, instead from the perspectives of the various mobsters as they’re suddenly hit without even seeing Remo or Chiun move. This is sort of how Ric Meyers would write the later Ninja Master books, only there the action scenes were better and bloodier. (Speaking of which, Meyers co-wrote four volumes of The Destroyer, and I definitely intend to check them out someday.)

The back cover states that a Dr. Floren is behind the blackmailing, but humorously enough this isn’t revealed until the final pages. Instead we learn that Floren is the chief earthquake researcher at the nearby Richter Institute, and it’s Floren’s twin daughters who are the pulpy evil villains that Grant was talking about. Unfortunately, they don’t show up until much too late in the novel – their presence could have greatly benefitted the opening half of the book.

If you check the cover (which I believe was by Hector Garrido, who also did the Baroness covers), you’ll see one of the twins kneeling worshipfully before Chiun. This, like the other events depicted on the cover, actually happens in the novel, and the twins are also dressed the same, with skin-tight T-shirts with red fists on them; however the twins, Jacki and Jill Floren, are brunettes rather than blondes. They’re also stacked vixens of the Russ Meyer variety, with breastesses so large as to be unnatural; when Remo first sees them, he has to sit down to hide his immediate erection.

The Floren twins appear to be hippie terrorists of a kind, denouncing “the Man” and wearing those fist T-shirts emblazoned with “NOW,” which is the name of their cause. But as mentioned, they just come into the narrative too late, with too much time given over to the bumbling exploits of Sheriff Wyatt, whom the girls constantly call “Pig.” But whereas the reader quickly figures out that the girls are the culprits, Remo is a little slow-witted about it, and doesn’t realize it until the very end, after he’s been double-teamed by them.

And as for the sex, it’s just as minimally-described as the violence:

Jacki stood up, followed Jill and Remo into the bedroom. They were already tangled together on the bed and she stood alongside them, trailing fingertips along their bodies, then she moved to join them. Jill was throbbing again and Remo felt himself being rolled over by Jacki.

They were insatiable. It was like making love to an octopus which had come to drain his vitals, to dry him up, to turn him into an aged man in one lasting moment of lust.

And that’s it, other than for some earlier stuff where the three frolic in the pool, but this too is written in much the same style, without ever getting into the nitty gritty. The actual “dirty stuff” occurs after the authors fade to black, and we only learn later that Remo was so damn skilled that he’s left the twins in a near-coma of satiation. But seriously, if you’re going to have your protagonist screw a pair of hot, sadistic, overly-busty twins, then is it too much to ask that you provide all the juicy details??

Jacki and Jill have devised a “water-laser” device with their father, Dr. Floren. Remo watches how this device causes the utter destruction of anything it’s unleashed upon. The girls and their dad claim that the device does not give off any vibrations, which elicits much argument between Chiun and Remo, with Chiun insisting that everything gives off vibrations. Chiun might not get much narrative space this volume, but he does get to save the day, taking on a colossal water laser that Dr. Floren has built in his effort to completely destroy California.

So yes, it turns out that the titular Dr. Quake (Floren’s apparent nickname) is in fact the true mastermind behind the blackmailing, though this is only revealed at the very end of the tale, despite being boldly pronounced on the back cover. Remo actually spends more time taking on the Mafia, in particular getting vengeance on a hitman who enjoys killing people with an icepick. This is the most memorable scene in the book, and the only time I’ve ever read where a character is killed by a carwash, with Remo strapping the poor bastard down onto the top of a car and sending it through the machine.

But Dr. Quake and his twins are overshadowed by the mobsters, such that their own fates come off as anticlimactic. For Jacki and Jill, who have been committing all of the behind-the-scenes gory murders in San Aquino, all Remo does is knock them into a crevice in the ground which he then shuts with the water-laser, burying them alive. As for Dr. Quake, Chiun saves the day as mentioned, with Remo knocked on his ass by the colossal laser and at death’s door, only saved by Chiun, who re-instructs Remo on various breathing techniques.

I sound like I’m being unduly harsh on Dr. Quake, but in truth I did enjoy it – when I read one of these Destroyer novels, I wish I had the entire series to read, because it really is like a soap opera for guys that you can get caught up in, with Remo and Chiun’s banter and the shared world of odd characters in which they live. But I’m judging the book as a men’s adventure novel, for which I think it’s an utter failure – the action is minimal, the focus is on comedy and spoofery, and the sex is anemic.

However, judged as a goofy sort of men’s adventure spoof, Dr. Quake is a roaring success. Personally, I prefer my pulp with a little more of a serious tone – I mean, I definitely want it to be off the wall and crazy, but so far as the characters go it should be the most serious thing in the world. With the Destroyer books, you more so get the feeling that the characters are as detached from the plot as the authors are.

The Destroyer #14: Judgment Day

The Destroyer #14: Judgment Day, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
February, 1974  Pinnacle Books

I enjoyed this volume of The Destroyer a lot more than the previous one I read. This time Sapir and Murphy make no attempt to write an actual men’s adventure novel, thus there are no unwieldy or arbitrary moments in which they must insert an action scene. Instead Judgment Day works as a straight-up satire from beginning to end, lampooning corporate culture.

This is done primarily through the character Blake Corbish, a thirty-something executive at IDC (read: IBM) who is a company man through and through, to the point where he speaks solely in “corp speak” and thinks only of advancing his own career. He’s the antagonist of the tale, further sign of how at odds The Destroyer is from others in this genre; the closest comparison I could think of would be TNT, which itself was a spoof of the genre conventions (though I enjoyed it a whole lot more).

As Judgment Day opens Corbish is moving in on the mysterious data mine in Folcroft Sanitarium of upstate New York; Corbish has learned that the computers there store a wealth of information, information beyond even that possessed by the FBI or other government agencies. Little does Corbish know that it’s actually the secret HQ of CURE. At any rate Corbish, a former Special Forces commando, has been tasked by IDC CEO TL Broon to find out what’s going on at Folcroft and to forcibly bring it into the IDC fold.

The titular Destroyer meanwhile is busily going about killing off IDC executives; Remo’s latest mission, courtesy Harold W. Smith, boss of CURE. Remo and Chiun are mostly supporting characters this time out, with Smith himself the true protagonist. Sapir and Murphy give the notoriously cold-blooded Smith the spotlight, having him captured, tortured, and left to die by Corbish; once Smith is able to free himself, he sets about gaining his vengeance, and it’s all very satisfyingly delivered.

Corbish gets the jump on Smith and takes him to a remote cabin in California, where at great length he breaks the old WWII spy. Smith tells Corbish all about CURE; at first Corbish thinks this is all just yet more bullshit to keep from telling the truth about what’s at Folcroft, but eventually he realizes that this CURE stuff is the truth. Believing the old man to be at death’s door, Corbish leaves the battered and bloodied Smith locked up in an old bomb cellar in the cabin and heads back for New York, to take over CURE.

The organization is so super-secret that only Smith, Remo, Chiun, the President, and now Corbish know about it, so Corbish is free to waltz into Folcroft, deliver the instructions Smith gave him for taking over the sanitarium, and thus become the new head of CURE. Remo’s caught in the middle; he’s never much cared for Smith and thinks the new guy might be a nice change of pace. Remo doesn’t come off too sharp here; though he is initially distrustful of Corbish, Remo basically brushes it off and plows on under the new management, instilling himself with patriotic/”good for the country” thoughts.

Chiun of course knows something is wrong, but instead of taking action he spends the majority of the novel sitting in various hotel rooms and belittling Remo, while working on a history of “Emperor” Smith. The Remo/Chiun verbal sparring is prevalent throughout Judgment Day and is as enjoyable as ever. There’s even a somewhat touching moment where Chiun states that Remo is the best student a teacher could hope for – not that this stops him from continuing to berate him.

I guess we can give Remo a little slack, though, given that he has no knowledge of Corbish being an IDC executive – Corbish merely presents himself as “the new man” and starts sending Remo out on jobs Corbish himself thinks of. Part of the comedy of the novel comes through Corbish putting Remo on tasks that are outside of Remo’s training or skillsets; there’s a great recurring joke with Chiun, who calls Corbish “Mr. Garbage,” constantly telling Remo that soon enough Corbish will be asking Remo to take out the trash or other menial tasks.

Since this time the authors aren’t trying to write an action novel, there are no forced combat scenes; Remo murders a few IDC executives (though to quote Schwarzenegger in True Lies, “They were all bad”) and Smith runs over a henchman Corbish sends after him. But other than that Judgment Day is free of any action scenes. There isn’t even any sex, though Remo does sleep with Holly Broon, the calculating and manipulative daughter of TL Broon. This scene too is played for laughs, as Remo takes the young woman moments after she’s tried to kill him, in vengeance for Remo’s having murdered TL Broon (at Corbish’s orders, of course).

Sapir and Murphy do a great job of juggling the comedy with the mounting suspense, as Smith works his way closer and closer to Folcroft. Since Remo and Chiun can’t be contacted and CURE must be kept secret at all costs, Smith must use his wits to get hold of Remo and to gain his vengeance on Corbish. It all comes to a head with another funny scene where Remo and Chiun finally meet up with Smith in a hotel room; Remo has been ordered by Corbish to kill Smith, but Smith boobytraps his room and talks some sense into Remo.

It is funny though that Smith is just as emotionless in his own way as Corbish is; despite having been abducted and tortured for the past few weeks, Smith doesn’t even try to contact his wife, who has no idea where he is. And when Smith gains his inevitable revenge and resumes control of CURE, there are no obligatory “emotional” scenes of reunion or anything of the sort; true to form, Smith immediately begins berating Remo.

Anyway I wasn’t really into #10: Terror Squad, but it would appear that these later volumes are better, likely because Pinnacle backed off and stopped insisting that Sapir and Murphy turn in an action-heavy Executioner-style series, and instead just let them do their own thing.

The Destroyer #10: Terror Squad

The Destroyer #10: Terror Squad, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
June, 1973  Pinnacle Books

I haven’t read a Destroyer novel since I was a kid, back when the now-forgotten film version came out in 1985. I know I had the novelization of the film, which I read, but I also had a few of the then-current volumes in the series, but I don’t remember which ones. At any rate, I know they weren’t my cup of tea, given that I was more into Phoenix Force and The Executioner at the time; I wanted to read about terrorists getting blasted to bits, not a warped spoof featuring a disinterested protagonist and his soap opera-addicted mentor.

But the other week I lucked into about twenty volumes of the series, ranging from this tenth volume on through to #73, which should give me a good indication of the series’s evolution over the years. What’s most staggering is the Destroyer series is still around; though it hasn’t been published since 2008, series co-creator Warren Murphy is still out there and supposedly trying to find the series a new home. It also appears that he’s made the majority of the installments available as eBooks.

Terror Squad though comes early in the series run, back when it was published by Pinnacle and series creators Murphy and Sapir were still writing the books together. By this point they’ve figured out the series vibe, which is a mix of satire, spoof, and action. My feeling though is that the comedy outweighs the action here; in fact the very few action scenes are barely described, and there’s little tension or suspense because the heroes are presented as such invincible fighters.

Remo Williams is the titular “Destroyer,” a former New Jersey cop whose death was faked so he could be reborn as the sole enforcer for CURE, a super-secret US agency which is overseen by Dr. Harold Smith. Remo’s mentor is Chiun, without question the highlight of this series, a wizened and world-weary Korean martial arts guru; the master of Sinanju, which apparently is the ultimate form of martial arts, though only known to a handful. By this tenth volume, Chiun feels that he has so properly trained his pupil that Remo is nearly “perfect,” and is grooming him to become the eventual master of Sinanju.

The novel is more comedy than action, which makes the brutality somewhat unexpected, lending Terror Squad an uncertain tone. The threat this time is an international army of terrorists which has abruptly sprouted up, hijaking planes and murdering people around the world. The novel opens with one cell hijacking a plane, during which they repeatedly rape a woman and then murder her baby.

After this horrific scene the novel settles down into extended bouts of banter between Remo and Chiun as they go off on a low-key search for the terrorists. Strangely, the terrorists in the opening scene are never mentioned again, so there’s no retribution. Instead Remo and Chiun head over to a college campus in New York from which this new terrorist army either trained or gathered new members.

In a coed-frequented bar Remo encounters Joan Hacker, a pretty blond who turns out to not only be filled with revolutionary fervor but also knows members of this terrorist army. This plot turns out to bear the brunt of the narrative; rather than traipsing around the world, taking on this international terrorist army, Remo instead hangs out here in New York, following Joan Hacker around and taking out the few assassins she sends after him.

Because, coincidentally enough, Joan also just happens to be working with the number one man behind the terrorist army, an “Oriental” whom the authors keep a mystery until the surprise reveal at the end. Following the man’s advice, Joan gets specific assassins to try to kill Remo – an old man, a thin man, etc – all as part of the mystery villain’s attempt to send Chiun a message.

The action scenes are brief and sparsely described. In fact they’re over in a few sentences, and usually relayed from the point of view of Remo’s victims; we’ll read that Remo rips off a guy’s fingers or something. Don’t expect much “true” action stuff, save for the finale, where Remo engages in a martial arts battle with the mystery man. (Spoiler warning: It’s Nuihc, Chiun’s nephew, who apparently has fought with Remo and Chiun in a previous installment, and who considers himself the true master of Sinanju.)

But really, the entire novel plays out on a humdrum level…Remo following Joan (after sleeping with her, of course, though don’t expect much from the sex scenes either), hastily dispatching the latest assassin (one of whom is an elderly German who once was an SS sadist), and then going back to his hotel to trade banter with Chiun.

Readers of this series know that it’s the banter that’s the true star, though. Remo and Chiun have a great rapport, with Chiun’s acidic whit fairly dripping off the page, and Remo’s lame attempts at comebacks always drawing a laugh. Without question the two leads of the Destroyer are more memorable and entertaining than the average men’s adventure protagonist, but at the same time the series is separate from the genre in that it operates on an entirely different vibe.

Also worth mentioning is that our heroes are friggin’ vicious. Remo doesn’t just kill his opponents, he pulls them apart. One brutal scene has Remo board a plane that’s been hijacked, and after questioning the terrorists he hurls each of them off of the plane! Also there is a nasty undertone in that anyone who finds out about CURE must end up dead. It gets to be that you feel sorry for the villains, in particular Joan Hacker, whom the authors portray as a good-natured fool who has gone astray.

Anyway, I wasn’t blown away by Terror Squad, but I enjoyed it enough that I’m happy I have several more volumes of the series to read.