Book Review: Death Check by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

This is the second book in the Destroyer series.  Before reading this book I read Created the Destroyer and The Day Remo Died (a prequel to the series) back to back, and quickly noticed how different the writing style was and how different the characters were in the two books.  I then learned that book one was first published in 1971, and the prequel was published in 1983 (as a novella in a book called The Assassins Handbook).  I believe there was also a foreword in The Day Remo Died explaining the difference in the characters, and the different tone and content of the first two books in the series.

So, I came into book two knowing all of this.  I have to say, I did not enjoy this book as much as the first one.  This was for several reasons.  First, if I remember correctly (I read this sporadically over the last month), this story takes place eight years later than book one - that is a pretty sizable gap where Remo is trained more by Chiun.  Second, Chiun is hardly in this story at all.  In fact, he never physically appears - it is all in Remo's memories.  Third, almost the entire book takes place at Brewster Forum (I kind of thought of it as a think tank country club for geniuses).  To me, this was kind of like filming an entire James Bond film at a golf course - the concept didn't work very well for me.

The story is kind of like a mystery.  It is believed that this think tank of geniuses as come up with a "simple little plan to conquer the world", and that someone is attempting to manipulate/control the group to obtain this information, which CURE sees as very dangerous - big national security problem.  So, Remo is sent in to discover what is going on, and potentially kill everyone to prevent anything bad from happening if he gets the order.  He spends most of his time interviewing the members and getting their backgrounds.

I did not find this book as interesting as the previous two books I read.  I'm still going to read book three, Chinese Puzzle, to see if the series changes for the better.   This is the point where Chiun becomes more involved and the characters become who they will be for the rest of the series.  If I don't find it any more entertaining than the first two books, I will likely stop reading the series.  However, given that there are at least 150 novels in the series, there must be a major upturn coming, so I'm optimistic.