The Destroyer 71 Return Engagement by Warren Murphy

The Destroyer 71 Return Engagement by Warren Murphy

This was quite simply a great Destroyer novel. After finally getting Remo to embrace the little village of Sinanju as his home and get engaged to ensure that the line of the Masters of Sinanju will continue, Chiun is unhappy. He feels left out. Remo and his fiancé are forging a bond with each other and Chiun is jealous. He misses the times when it was just Remo and him in America. So, he returns to America in a bid to force Remo to follow him. (And if you’ve read almost any other books in the series, you will realize that this isn’t sad—it’s hilarious.)

 

Harold Smith, head of CURE, is not immediately pleased with Chiun’s return to duty. Despite saving the nation in every book of the series, Remo and Chiun cause him a tremendous amount of personal stress and he was enjoying not having his ulcers aggravated by their continuing antics. But, as usual, he has a problem, and he sets Chiun on it—keeping an inventor from being assassinated. But Smith has a second problem which the reader knows is related to Chiun’s mission. Someone is going around the country murdering everyone named Harold Smith.

 

So, when Remo follows Chiun to America, he walks into two separate problems. The bad guy behind both problems is a Nazi who was crippled by Harold Smith at the end of World War II. He wants to get the use of his legs back (for which he needs the help of the inventor) and he wants vengeance on Harold Smith (which explains his killing all the other Smiths as he looks for him.) Oh, and did I mention he is literally a Nazi who is trying to start a new Nazi movement in the U.S? This sets up an absolutely hilarious scene in which Remo and Chiun try to infiltrate a neo-Nazi compound by pretending to be recruits. Just as a reminder, Chiun is a very old Korean and whatever Remo is (he’s an orphan, so he doesn’t know), it’s not Aryan.

 

This one is fun from the first page to the last.