Review: Last War Dance by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Destroyer 17 Last War Dance by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Sometimes a Destroyer novel works because of the introduction of a fascinating problem. That’s the case in this book. Back in the early 1960s, the U.S. developed a doomsday nuclear weapon to frighten the Soviets out of launching a first strike. As long as the weapon’s location is secret, it deters the Soviets. If its location is ever revealed, however, there is the possibility that the Soviets could turn the weapon back on America destroying much of North America. A decade has passed and the weapon, hidden beneath a memorial marking a massacre of native Americans by the U.S. army, is in danger of being revealed due to protestors planning to destroy the memorial.

 

That’s the problem confronting CURE—how to deactivate the weapon without the Soviets ever figuring out that it is really there. To complicate matters, Remo and Chiun also have to deal with the protestors (a ridiculous parody that really didn’t work that well). Weaknesses aside, the eventual resolution of the problem was sheer genius.