Infernal Revenue

The Destroyer #96

by Warren Murphy (Creator), Richard Sapir (Creator), Will Murray

Remo and Chiun join forces with Harold Smith and his crime-fighting organization in their battle against an artificial intelligence computer chip called Friend that hijacks CURE's computer system and holds the world hostage to technoterrorism.

Genres: Mystery

Audio Cassette

First published August 1, 1994

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

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

This was a fun adventure and a welcome change after the silly nonsense of the previous book.

[Wayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is nicely written, too bad it's pretty much all boring. What starts out like a good book, deteriorates into what amounts to The Destroyer doing some soul searching. Chiun complaining on and on about his village and gold. Also, an entire chapter and more is about computer problems for the director of CURE. Not much action. It is also left open, to be continued in #97. Do I even care?!?

[Ralph McEwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is what it is. A violent silly series with violent silly characters. I listened to this stuff to keep me awake and entertained on long driving trips. It worked.

[Call me Jeeves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember watching Reno Williams the adventure begins, it wasn’t the original beginning to the series, I don’t think. But it was a great movie. I have since then seen it many more times.
This was an audiobook from audible from Graphic audio series. It was a full cast just like a movie and it funny, and adventurous. There are over a hundred books in the series so I am not sure all of them are available on audible.
But it was fun!

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

My least favorite of the handful of Destroyer books from this era that I've read thus far. For an action/adventure tale, not much seems to actually happen over the course of this book. There's a mixup with some gold, and then some geopolitical machinations twisted by an evil computer program, and then it all kind of leads into the next book in the series (which is more grounded). It just didn't hang together for me in the way that some of the other Destroyer books have.

[Jeff J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

#96 in the Destroyer series. An advanced intelligence holds the world hostage. Much chaos ensues.

[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. Friend returns and has a terrific plan for eliminating the danger of CURE and its two assassins. Crashing every major computer system across the country, starting with the ones at CURE, this artificial intelligence sees chaos quickly spreading and the IRS, led by a tip from Friend, at the doors of CURE. Recommended