REVIEW: The Destroyer #27 (”The Last Temple”)

PUBLISHED: 1977.

WRITTEN BY: Warren Murphy & Ric Meyers. This is only the second book in the series to feature an author other than Sapir or Murphy; Meyers is a rather well-known author and critic who writes a great deal about martial arts cinema.

THE PLOT: When a pair of Israelis who had worked with the country’s secret nuclear weapons program turn up dead, CURE gets involved — and discovers a conspiracy of ex-Nazis who have been in deep cover for decades and are determined to wipe out the Jews, even if they have to destroy the entire Middle East.

BODYCOUNT: A pitiful seven. For a story that centers on (a) the Israel-Palestine conflict and (b) Nazis trying to wipe out the Jews, hardly anyone dies, and as usual, the majority of the bodycount is attributable to Remo and Chiun. The villains kill a total of three people in the whole book.

THE VILLAINS: It’s Horst Wessel! Of course, the writers, for unknown reasons, call him Horst Vessel, but it’s pretty clear they’re talking about the guy who wrote the National Socialist anthem. He’s pretty convincingly menacing as an aging, life-hating Nazi creep, but it’s not made clear exactly how he’s still alive, since the actual Horst Wessel was murdered almost a decade before the Second World War even began. A fun bad guy, if an extremely confusing one.

EMBARRASSING SEX SCENES: None! By this point, they’re making a big deal about how mastering the art of Sinanju has left Remo pretty much incapable of getting any actual enjoyment out of life, which includes doing the bump. He deploys the infallible lovemaking art of Sinanju only once, and it’s more out of pity than out of lust. Meanwhile, over in an Executioner novel, Mack Bolan has nautical-themed sex with another 82 women by the fifth chapter.

SATIRICAL TARGETS: Surprisingly, this one’s pretty light on the satire, being largely plot-driven. In fact, it’s pretty gloomy and heavy a lot of the time, with almost all of the humor coming from Chiun. The Arabs get some shit early on, but it thankfully peters out before getting too obnoxious, and there’s one funny scene where a trio of Palestinian assassins pretend to be Peruvian (or, as they call themselves, “Perubic”). There’s also a goofy shot at the French (in the intro, during an entertaining sequence where Remo drops a drug kingpin off of the Eiffel Tower), but again, it’s gone before it’s too annoying.

THE WRITING: Actually one of the best-written of the series that I can recall. From the very beginning — a heart-wrenching sequence where a doomed Israeli scientist reluctantly courts a woman in his neighborhood before realizing, too late, that he won’t live long enough to consummate the relationship — there’s been a great deal of attention paid to the tone and feel of the book. It’s a short book (180 pages) and moves along at the usual rapid clip of Destroyer novels, but Murphy and Meyers seem to have taken particular care to make this one a moody and mournful book.

One of the two writers (it’s always hard to tell who’s responsible for what, especially since I’m not familiar with much of their fiction outside the Destroyer series) has clearly visited Israel, where most of the book is set; the descriptions of setting are far more detailed than we usually get out of the series, and quite well-done to boot. Some of the passages are downright arty, and the plot moves along nicely but doesn’t sacrifice prose quality at all. Even the dialogue has quite a bit of snap and some scenes that are naturally funny instead of forced gags. Finally, there’s a terrific false ending at the climax of the book that I didn’t see coming, and it’s both funny and surprising as hell. All that, and it comes with a Kent cigarette ad in the middle of the book! CLASSY.

CHIUN STUFF: Chiun is all over this one, and he provides some really great humor scenes. The majority of the action is set in Israel, a land he describes as that of “Herod the Maligned”. The Jews he has naught but contempt for, though, since they never found it necessary to hire the services of the Masters of Sinanju, and heaps scorn on both Jesus and Mary for not making any money. There’s also a great running gag where he becomes infuriated with Dr. Smith for including Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in his shipment of soap opera videos, and demands that Remo send a threatening letter to Norman Lear.

THE VERDICT: Despite the absence of a major conflict, a noteworthy villain (Horst Wessel is certainly unique, but he’s not all that fleshed-out), or any series continuity, The Last Temple is so well-written and well-developed that you really don’t care. The funny scenes are exceptionally funny despite — or maybe even because of — the absence of any pointed satire, and the action scenes are few and far between but quite worthwhile. It’s also got some really nice emotional moments, surprisingly good scene-setting, and decent pacing. This one earns an 8.0 on the Sinanju Scale of 1-10.

 

Admin Note: New Books!

Hi, Remo freaks:

I just received via parcel post a box full of new — well, actually, incredibly old — Destroyer novels for future review, including the notorious #30, “Mugger Blood”! Judging from the redolent odor, they came from a home occupied by an aged man who chain-smoked Lucky Strikes, which is very appropriate.

In the meantime, I’m about halfway through #27, “The Last Temple”, and it’s a corker. I should have a new review up for y’all by the end of the week.

 

REVIEW: The Destroyer #10 (”Terror Squad”)

PUBLISHED: 1973.

WRITTEN BY: Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy.

THE PLOT: Previously unorganized, incompetent terrorist gangs are showing unexpected levels of competence — and malice. Remo must stop them before they disrupt a major anti-terrorism summit; and Chiun suspects that there’s more to them than simple mayhem.

BODYCOUNT: approximately 22. Most of these — around a dozen, all terrorists posing as Army officers — are wiped out by Chiun; of the remaining ten, seven are killed by Remo. Astonishingly, the terrorists only kill one person in the whole book, and it’s a baby.

THE VILLAINS: Putatively, it’s a gaggle of terrorist outfits, from a Palestinian splinter group to a Black Muslim outfit to a Chicano Liberation movement patterned after the Black Panthers. Really, though, they’re being manipulated behind the scenes by Joan Hacker, a wealthy college student and wannabe radical, and she herself is a pawn of Niuhc, the evil nephew of Chiun , himself a master of Sinanju and a sworn enemy of Remo’s.

EMBARRASSING SEX SCENES: Call it one-half. Sapir and Murphy were clearly getting pretty tired of the grind, so to speak, and truncate Remo’s seduction of Joan Hacker to a couple of paragraphs. Another sex scene, later in the book, is played entirely for laughs.

SATIRICAL TARGETS: This one’s awfully right-wing in its choice of targets. Arabs are portrayed almost exclusively as dupes and abettors of baby-killing, Vietnam is no big deal, American radicals don’t know how good they’ve got it, and Remo slips from his life-hating cynic mode to drop cornball assessments about how we oughtta just lock up all of these stooges. Still, there’s some funny jibes at garden-party radicals, and you can see the warring voices with the two writers: one black radical turns out to be unexpectedly erudite, one Muslim hijacker advocates reason and moderation, and so on. It’s the we-hate-everybody feel of the comedy that salvages the more racist/xenophobic moments, and likewise, it’s the humanizing of some of the villains that keeps the Destroyer series’ more intensely reactionary bits from sticking too far in the craw.

THE WRITING: For much of the book, Terror Squad is plodding and obvious. The terrorist attacks read, more or less, like all the other yawn-inducing slaughterfests of other men’s adventure series. There are some fun bits (like Remo’s casual, chummy conversation with a skyjacker), but really, it doesn’t kick into gear until the first hints that Niuhc is behind the whole thing. It doesn’t exactly improve all that much then, but there is a lot of ominous pseudo-mysticism (almost like the “ritual reluctance” to name the Trystero in Crying of Lot 49) that creeps in and keeps it entertaining.

Remo’s characterization is all over the map in this one, too — in particular, the way he treats Joan Hacker is far more sympathetic than you’d expect given how casually he murders other abettors of terror who are a lot more sincere — but it does establish nicely something that I think is important to appreciating the series, which is that he’s really an unlikable bastard who no one in their right mind would like. Pretty much anyone he gets involved with has reason to regret it, even if he doesn’t kill them.
CHIUN STUFF: Chiun’s got a major role in this, and not just in support — he’s much better characterized than Remo, and spends much of the book trying to tip Remo to Niuhc’s plans without telling him outright and risking his going off half-cocked. He’s also shown as both deadly and fallible, as he doesn’t catch on to Niuhc’s master plan until the last minute, but he never lets his doubt interfere with his being a jackass. He also has some funny moments, especially his book-long quest to visit Brooklyn and see the shrine honoring the birthplace of America’s greatest cultural figure, Barbra Streisand.

THE VERDICT: The wandering plot (early on, there’s once again far too many scenes of the hapless Remo meandering from one place to another, never quite able to figure out how anything fits together), a strange subplot about Dr. Smith undergoing a midlife crisis, and the obvious and partisan politics slow this thing wy down, as does the lack of any particularly fine prose — until Nuihc shows up. The presence of a major villain, though, with a sense of continuity, a bunch of creepy mystical trappings, and a lot of great dialogue, redeems it somewhat. Let’s call this one a 6.0 on the Sinanju Scale of 1-10.

 

REVIEW: The Destroyer #5 (”Dr. Quake”)

PUBLISHED: 1972.

WRITTEN BY: Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy.

THE PLOT: Someone has devised a machine capable of stopping earthquakes — or starting them. They’re using it to blackmail a California town, and if their scheme succeeds, the whole state is next to go.

BODYCOUNT: 21. Most at the hands of the villains, by a small majority. Best death: Remo runs a mafioso through an automatic car wash.

THE VILLAINS: Dr. Silas Forben, a.k.a. “Dr. Quake”, a renegade geologist (although it’s a bit murky as to whether he was truly behind the scheme); his two Mansonesque daughters, Jacki and Jill Forben, who spearhead the blackmail scheme; and the Beverly Hills mafiosi Don Fiavorante Pubescio and his henchmen, Gummo “The Pipe” Barussio and Manny “The Pick” Musso, who try to take over the earthquake protection racket. Interestingly, Remo misreads who’s behind the whole scheme from the very beginning, and holds more wrath for the mafiosi, who took out the man he’d originally pegged as the bad guy, than for the Forben Family.

EMBARRASSING SEX SCENES: One. Although this was far enough into the series that the always-fun Remo/Chiun relationship was getting really fleshed out, it wasn’t far enough that the writers had gotten bored with pandering stroke material, and we get a doozy here between Remo and the Forben twins. There is a funny bit where the girls invite Chiun to join them for a romp, and he refuses, saying “The last woman I had I was twelve years getting rid of.”

SATIRICAL TARGETS: Most of it’s pretty mild here, with a few cheap shots at the liberated Manson-feminist Forben twins on the one side and the homophobic, anti-Semitic southern sheriff on the other. However, since most of the action takes place in California, there’s some fun gags at the Golden State’s expense: Remo refers to the state as “the place where all the misfits of the world congregate, under the assumption that since they were going to be miserable anyway, they might as well be warm”, and Dr. Smith has a conversation with the President (then Nixon), who says he’s willing to pay the ransom to save California, and implying that it would be a different story if it were, say, Texas.

THE WRITING: Surprisingly good at the start; the introductory chapter contains this nice little piece of prose about earthquake country:

Every man owes God a life. California owes Him a disaster, payable about twice a century.

For those people not hurled hundreds of feet in shifting earth; for those not buried alive in their homes along with the fear-triggered refuse of their bodies; for those not deposited deeper than any gravedigger’s plan, these disasters are considered a simple geological adjustment.

There’s also some nice little psychological bits about Remo choking on his own disconnected hate; Don Pubescio is left open as an effective future villain; and there’s a good line about the ideal way of getting rid of the Mafia: stopping the manufacturing of Cadillacs.

CHIUN STUFF: Chiun (still referred to as a ninja here; this is before they really pushed the idea that all martial arts sprang from Sinanju) still isn’t a major character yet, but he’s got some fun scenes: this book has some of the first scenes of him chiding Remo for his meat-eating and “bubbling drinks laden with sugar” habit, for one thing. He also destroys the earthquake machine and notes that “nothing works in America except me”, and has a great bit where he throws out a AAA road map of California because it doesn’t have Korea on it.

THE VERDICT: The plot gets pretty lost towards the end, and while it’s nice to see Remo portrayed as essentially too dumb to figure stuff out (he gets some basic training in geology early on in the book and forgets it all by the fifth chapter), he does spend a good hunk of time wandering around aimlessly not picking up on obvious clues. So, plotwise, it’s a bit of a wash, but it doesn’t have too much exposition, there’s nothing extremely embarrassing outside the sex scene, and there’s a lot of funny bits. Let’s call this one a 7.0 on the Sinanju Scale of 1-10.

 

A Short History of Sinanju

In case you’re unfamiliar with the background of the Destroyer universe, here’s a precis:

In 1962, President Kennedy, sensing unprecedented challenges in his New Frontier, commissioned a secret organization known as CURE. Its job was to work outside the Constitution in order to defend it — to avoid the twin evils of anarchy and totalitarianism. To that end, he recruited two men: computer genius and brilliant intelligence analyst Dr. Harold Smith, and ex-soldier/enforcer Conn MacCleary. As time passed, Smith realized that he’d need a nearly unstoppable assassin to help him fight America’s enemies; in order to build one, he bought the services of an ancient martial arts master named Chiun.

Chiun, an irascible and intolerant master killer from the tiny North Korean coastal village of Sinanju, was the latest of a long line of deadly assassins. In the mists of time lost, the people of Sinanju, reduced to poverty and desperation, hired themselves out as killers, utilizing a mysterious martial art they named for themselves — a martial art so invincible, all others were but weak shadows of it; a martial art so sophisticated that its users seemed possessed of supernatural power. The seemingly amoral Chiun didn’t care who hired him, as long as they paid him in gold and showed the proper deference to his greatness; but he likewise had no loyalty to America. That’s where Remo Williams came in.

Dr. Smith needed the perfect, untraceable assassin, and who better than a dead man? In order to get one, Smith & MacCleary arranged for the frame-up of a New Jersey cop for a murder he didn’t commit. He was sent to the electric chair, but he only seemed to die; the policeman, who had no friends or family, emerged from a false death and was assigned as Chiun’s student. MacCleary didn’t live past their first mission, but the newly dubbed Remo Williams proved extraordinarily adept at the martial art of Sinanju, and, with the aid of Chiun, who began to think of him as his adopted son despite his unfortunate lack of Korean ancestry, he became CURE’s unstoppable super-assassin. Remo didn’t exactly have the most patriotic attitude towards his homeland — if anything, he proved to be even more cynical than his Korean master — but he always fought against any threat to its safety.

And there were always threats…

 

The Destroyer Project: An Introduction

The Destroyer series, first published in 1971 and created by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, is an odd duck in the so-called “men’s adventure” genre. Despite robust sales figures in the first two decades of its existence, the Destroyer series — which told the adventures of covert government assassin Remo Williams and his troublesome Korean mentor, Chiun — set itself apart with unconventional thematic elements (including frequent use of sci-fi, espionage, and even superhero trappings), better-than-expected prose, and, above all, a sense of humor.

Where its rivals, like the humorless Killmaster and Executioner series, were characterized by grim violence and grimmer sex, the Destroyer books (of which there were 149 at last count, by a dozen authors over almost four decades) never lost a sly sense of satire, mocking current events, pop culture, and even itself. It wasn’t always great, but it was always better than it needed to be. It represented a curious modern transition of old pulp traditions, and it brought us a handful of memorable characters and occasionally hilarious dialogue that transcended its origins.

When this blog was started (May 12, 2008), I happened across a massive cache of Destroyer novels from my younger days that I’d stored away and forgotten about. The purpose of this blog may eventually grow to a more ambitious Remo Williams fansite/archive, but for now, my intentions are simple: I will read and review, in inchoate order, the Destroyer books in my possession. I welcome your thoughts, and hope you enjoy the Destroyer Project.