4/5/22

His name was Remo and the hot Newark night offended him, and the smells from the alley where rats scratched inside open garbage cans filled his senses with decay and the occasional street lights cast more glare than illumination.

Sometimes it's the simplest villains that are the most effective in the Destroyer series, and in this case, it doesn't get simpler than corporate millionaire sociopath (is there any other kind?) James Orayo Fielding. Content on squishing bugs (as he sees people) on a small and diplomatic scale, a terminal diagnosis of leukemia inspires him to crank his sadism up to eleven with a diabolical plan to personally create a plague capable of wiping out millions under the guise of solving world hunger.

If that isn't bad enough, not only does Fielding con Remo into believing his con, but paranoid mobster Johnny "Deuce" Deussio is beginning to suspect that there is a secret government organization out there trying to stop organized crime, and his snooping around the edges of CURE, as well as putting hits out on Remo, only complicates matters further.

For an old-school fan of the Destroyer novels like myself, this is the kind of straight-forward plot that made the series what it was in the early days. No fantastic sci-fi elements or mystical subplots, just crazy Bond villains and ruthless gangsters. Remo spends some time obsessing over being without a home, and considers abandoning CURE with Chiun, but this has more to do with providing a story arc for a reoccurring character then it does with challenging a plot structure that had yet to become stale so early in the series. One of my personal favorites of the series. ( )