The Seventh Stone

The Destroyer #62

by Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir, Ed Hunsburger

Two thousand years is a long time to hold a grudge, but as long as the ancient Wo family’s bloodline flows, the memory of a long-ago slight will never be laid to rest. Passing their secrets from father to son, father to son, countless generations of Wos have built a global network with a single goal: killing the Master of Sinanju.

Remo Williams is The Destroyer, an all-American cop recruited—through highly unorthodox methods—into a secret government law-enforcement organization. Trained in the esoteric martial art of Sinanju by his aged Korean mentor, Chiun, Remo is America's last line of defense against mad scientists, organized crime, ancient undead gods, and anything else that threatens the Constitution. An action-adventure series leavened with social and political satire, the Destroyer novels have been thrilling readers worldwide for decades.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Adventure, Action

223 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 6, 1985

About the author

Warren Murphy was an American author, most famous as the co-creator of The Destroyer series, the basis for the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. He worked as a reporter and editor and after service during the Korean War, he drifted into politics.

Murphy also wrote the screenplay for Lethal Weapon 2. He is the author of the Trace and Digger series. With Molly Cochran, he completed two books of a planned trilogy revolving around the character The Grandmaster, The Grandmaster (1984) and High Priest (1989). Murphy also shares writing credits with Cochran on The Forever King and several novels under the name Dev Stryker. The first Grandmaster book earned Murphy and Cochran a 1985 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, and Murphy's Pigs Get Fat took the same honor the following year.

His solo novels include Jericho Day, The Red Moon, The Ceiling of Hell, The Sure Thing and Honor Among Thieves. Over his career, Murphy sold over 60 million books.

He started his own publishing house, Ballybunion, to have a vehicle to start The Destroyer spin-off books. Ballybunion has reprinted The Assassin's Handbook, as well as the original works Assassin's Handbook 2, The Movie That Never Was (a screenplay he and Richard Sapir wrote for a Destroyer movie that was never optioned), The Way of the Assassin (the wisdom of Chiun), and New Blood, a collection of short stories written by fans of the series.

He served on the board of the Mystery Writers of America, and was a member of the Private Eye Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, the American Crime Writers League and the Screenwriters Guild.

Reviews

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been rereading the entire Destroyer series for a couple of years now, but the blurb for this book made me highly reluctant to open this one. I guess the point of the blurb is that “sex sells” but it was highly misleading as sex really has almost nothing to do with the plot. In fact, this is a fairly classic Destroyer adventure with a little more cleverness than we’ve seen in the majority of the last twenty or thirty books.

Roughly 2000 years ago, a ruler hired Sinanju to kill his brother, and then tried to get out of paying them because he thought natural causes were the reason for his enemy’s death. Naturally, the Master of Sinanju could not accept this and rather painfully proved that he had in fact killed the ruler’s enemy. This made the ruler willing to pay the master, but not willing to publicly do so (as he had publicly denounced the master earlier.) So the Master of Sinanju set about changing the ruler’s mind, eventually driving him out of his kingdom and chasing him around the world until he lost track of him off the coast of North America. 2000 years later, the ruler’s descendants are looking for vengeance.

Now the idea of the family who keeps its grudge for millennia happens with a fair amount of frequency in this series, but it’s still a good plot device. The bulk of the book is taken up by their attempts to kill Remo and Chiun. It was entertaining and there was a very well-prepared surprise in the novel. Too bad the book has a blurb which really has nothing to do with the story.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating 3

Another middling entry in the series I thought.
For what felt like the umpteenth time Remo and Chiun are faced with an enemy from Sinanju past.
And as per usual it is dealt with relatively easily.
At least this time the writer did a good job in ensuring that the characters of the main trio all rang true I thought.

[Deborah Sorensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

Is Good tanks looking for new books is great to read is better than it is great new book to read

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

These ate great reads. But if you don't know the back story it may inhibit your reading pleasure. So a little history lesson.
The American Goverment had lost its grip on organised crime and the odd few butters, world dominators etc, had been rearing thief ugly heads.
So an organisation was st up to stop the rot. An agency that did not exist with an agent that did not exist as its assassin .
So they bought the services of a Sinanju Master assassin to train a framed, disgraced cop called Remo Williams.
The training went further than anyone could ever imagine turning the cop into a force of nature able to combat any threat that tried to destroy America.
Remo became the Destroyer!
This story centres on a part of Sinanju history about a emporet who reneged on the payment to a master assassin a thousand years ago and how the emporet decided to to knock off the assassin but it backfired. They tried six methods carved in stone that failed leaving a seventh method that comes to light in Remo's tenure as the master.
Will the seventh stone succeed?
These are funny, irreverent stories filled with dark humour and history of the Sinanju assassins.
Great fun.
The origin storyCreated The Destroyer is free on Amazon for kindle at the moment too.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the big men's adventure series from the 70's than ran an impressive 145 books. The series while an adventure/action story is also full of satire toward much of the mainstream fads and icons of the time. An interesting main character and the sarcastic mentor makes this a funny action/adventure read. The House of Wo and the House of Sinanju have had a rivalry for over 2000 years and now Remo and Chiun must end it. Recommended

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A family of killers set an elaborate trap to destroy the Masters of Sinaju. Nice mix of action, humor and mystery.
These books read like a fun, summer action movie. These books are the literary version of junk food, but good junk food and sometimes you are in the mood for some junk food.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 08.15.85