Review: Judgment Day by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Destroyer 14 Judgment Day by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

The fourteenth Destroyer novel should have been called Hostile Takeover and this one is all Harold Smith’s show. Smith has been a fairly two-dimensional supporting cast member for the first thirteen books. He’s the elderly, budget conscious, patriotic head of CURE who apparently has no imagination and no personal ambition other than to do his job to the best of his ability. He carries a poison pill with him at all times, prepared to commit suicide to protect the secret of CURE. But in this volume, the bad guys have figured out the kind of information CURE tracks and they kidnap Smith and torture out of him the info they need to step in and take over. Unfortunately for them, they forget to actually kill Smith and that oversight leads to one of the best Destroyer novels, because Smith is not about to leave CURE in enemy hands. Murphy and Sapir finally bring the head of CURE fully to life and leave only the question of why they waited so long to do so. Fans of the series will not want to miss this book.