The Destroyer 1: Created, The Destroyer by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Created, The Destroyer
The Destroyer 1
by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
1971, Pinnacle

Remo Williams is a Newark cop framed for murder and sent to the electric chair.  His death is faked by the super secret organization CURE.  CURE is dedicated to wiping out organized crime through non-violent means: manipulating politics, fixing juries, etc.  They've decided to expand into assassination, starting with Remo.

Remo is trained in the martial arts and other areas of espionage before being sent on his first mission: murder his own recruiter.  Remo refuses and uses the opportunity to get drunk and considers going on the run.  Instead, he finishes his mission to infiltrate the building of a mafia enforcer by seducing his virgin feminist daughter.

Remo kills a bunch of mafia goons with his bare hands, including a pretty gruesome scene involving a thug's legs being cut off by a car crusher.  The novel ends with him banging the virgin daughter some more, which comes across a bit dark given that Remo said earlier that he was planning on killing her to not leave witnesses.

The 1988 reprint I read began with an introduction written by Chiun, Remo's Korean martial arts instructor.  Chiun is barely in the novel and has not developed into the comic relief he is in later books.  From what I can tell, the series gets increasingly comedic and over-the-top as time goes on.  1971 was still early for Men's Adventure, and the novel had a vibe more similar to Donald Hamilton or Andrew York.

The quality of the writing is good but you can feel that there were problems finding clear direction or sense of tone.  I'll need to give a later novel a try.  Some fans don't like the movie, but I actually preferred the film over this installment for having improved training sequences and having more charm.

The first men's adventure book I ever read was a Destroyer novel - a page of it, anyway, and I hated it so much I didn't touch the genre again for another 20 years.  My tastes have gotten more sophisticated over the years, but it's still taken me this long to crack open a Destroyer title.  Chiun seems funny in small doses, but would get real annoying real fast.  I've also read that the series later tends towards mean-spirited humor, reactionary politics, and a smug disdain for the genre, but none of that is evident in this installment.  I'll find out for myself later.