Encounter Group by Warren Murphy

Destroyer 56 Encounter Group by Warren Murphy

Murphy is back with another Destroyer novel that sadly slips away from the highs of recent books. It begins with a plodding spoof of groups searching for UFOs but suddenly heats up when Remo gets hurt by a flying saucer. As readers of the series know, it’s very hard to hurt Remo so the stakes were suddenly real. To make matters even more concerning, Chiun believes that the alien Remo encountered may well represent the beings that gave Sinanju the sun source a thousand or more years earlier. (In Sinanju legend this is represented by a ring of fire descending from the heavens, but they do not know what the ring of fire was.) In his eagerness to learn more from the alien, Chiun joins his team and helps carry out his order to save the world by getting rid of America’s nuclear arsenal leaving Remo—never the sharpest knife in the drawer—to figure out what is really going on and save the nation again. The book is fun, but it’s not great.