12 news stories featuring Remo Williams and Chiun!
Edited by Rich Harvey and published by Bold Adventure Press a small publisher specializing in new pulp fiction.
Stories by various authors including Molly Cochran (wife of Warren Murphy and ghostwriter for several of the originals) James Mullaney who wrote some of the later books, Gerald Welch (author of the eight books in the Legacy spin-off) and Will Muray (who’s written several of the new Doc Savage series)
With over 150 books and a movie (starring Fred Ward and Joel Grey) the original Destroyer series started in 1971 and tell the story of Remo, a Newark cop falsely accused of murder and executed. The execution is faked and he wakes up to become an assassin for a secret agency.
He is trained by Chiun, last master of Sinanju the first and deadliest martial art. But Sinanju is very different from karate or any other art. Through training Remo is transformed into a superhuman death machine, capable of impossible feats but unable to enjoy a simple steak, lest his fine-tuned body kill him.
With time he become the last heir to a house whose origin is lost to time immemorial. A house training only one assassin by generation, never using any weapon and selling its services to any emperor who can pay the price – only in pure gold. Thus every year a secret submarine braves the dangerous water around Korea in the middle of the Cold War to deliver its gold to a forgotten village. The safest place on earth as the Korean ruler knows better than anyone that Sinanju’s gold is not to be touched.
The series quickly abandons the classic threats like mafia bosses for more exotic pulp goodness. Remo faces an obsessive android, a biologist using her science to create a cult of cannibal mutants, a supercomputer hell-bent on making money and plenty of other bizarre things.
It’s also famous for its derisive tone, Remo the occidental and Smith the man to whom he is supposed to obey understands little at the beginning of the series of Chiun’s ancestral ways. And the very concept of democracy is equally lost to the old master who believe Smith secretly dream of ruling the U.S.A. But bit by bit Chiun will become a father figure for Remo until later the ex-cop become more an heir of Sinanju than a government assassin.
You can get the book on amazon here.
The originals are also on amazon if you are curious but it is better to start with book 3 or 4 as the first two are not really representative of the series.
