New Destroyer Novel

The new Destroyer book is out, and I finished reading it last night. I have always loved the series, which is probably one of the last of the “Men’s Adventure” book series that used to fill book shelves in the 70’s. They all had names like “The Executioner”, “The Butcher”, “The Death Merchant” and the like, and most of the ones that you can still find in used book stores were published by Pinnacle Books, and in the early 80’s, they started wandering from publisher to publisher.

Most of the 80’s and 90’s were a great time for the series, as Will Murray was the series ghostwriter. He was a big pulp fiction fan, and captured the series odd mix of action, humor, fantasy and satire and wrote the best books of the series without exception. Yeah, I loved the Warren Murphy/Dick Sapir novels, but Murray understood the characters on a deeper level and made them into more than just vehicles for jokes or fight scenes.

He left when the series was at Gold Eagle (the men’s action arm of Harlequin publishing), and the series has been pretty uneven since then. The few good books were written by Jim Mullaney, but there are quite a few of his books that forget that the series works best when it is making fun of EVERYONE, and fall into the Rush Limbaugh style of “humor”.

The current book is the first that he’s written in about 3 years, the first at a new publisher, and is also the first to dump the old series numbering in favor of a new start. Mullaney is also the first ghostwriter to get his name on the cover as writer, so that’s a good thing in my opinion.

How’s the book?

Better than the series has been, but still not as great as it used to be. The plot starts by dismissing all of the books written since Mullaney, which comes off as pure fan service, and then quickly gets into a plot about a Mexican General wanting to make Mexico’s borders what they were before the US took the Southwest.

Along the way we get a lot of Remo/Chuin interaction (good), ham-fisted satire of tired right wing targets Ted Kennedy and PBS (snore) and a fast moving action plot (good). The core of the series is the interplay between Remo and Chuin, which is one of the elements that have been VERY hard to screw up. Even in the silly “Remo Williams” movie, the Remo/Chuin stuff was great fun.

How did I like the book? Like most fans, I pine for the return of Will Murray, but since it will never happen, this is a passable continuation of the series and had a few scenes there were genuinely funny, the plot was interesting and the action sequences were good enough to drive the plot.

For Destroyer fans, it gets a 4 out of 5, and for other readers, it gets a 3 out of 5 and is a pleasant enough way to waste an afternoon.

A message from beyond the grave

My hands have been taken over by the Late Jerry Falwell:

Hello heathens,

Heaven is a truly wonderful place. I see all of the people who I agreed with on scripture and politics. I'm having wonderful discussions about how there aren't any Homos, Jews or Liberals here, and it shows that I was right all along. I still haven't seen Jesus, though, but when I do, I'm going to ask him to turn up the air conditioning. It's fucking HOT here in heaven.

In six months, we all get candy

Since the "Mission Accomplished" statement in 2003, we've been told that everything in Iraq would be settled in Six Months. Every one of the apologists for the war has said that it will be over in six months, and have said that for the last three and a half years. When the Surge started, we were told that we'd know how it was working in six months, but the White House is backpedaling on it, saying that they haven't STARTED the Surge yet and won't start counting the six months until all of the soldiers are there.

What is so magic about six months, you may ask?

Simple. Six Months is an eternity in the 24 hour news cycle that the White House and its minions cultivate. If it didn't happen in the last 24 hours, it can be denied, forgotten and dismissed, and after six months, the only people who remember what was said are the people they have trained the MSM and most overbusy Americans to ignore or think of as irrelevant.

However, I'm noticing that the cracks are starting to show. Trent Lott (hardly a bleeding heart liberal) has given a few statements saying that he thinks the White House should have until September to show their plan is successful. Other Republicans are saying the same thing, as well as the usual Democratic Party suspects who never met a Republican in power they couldn't suck up to fast enough. Sure, it's still 4 months away, but it's no longer the mythical, moving six months.

I'm sure that part of it is that BOTH Parties want Iraq behind them as they plow into an elongated election cycle, but there's something else going on here. I am not sure what it is, but these sorts of rhetoric shifts are never just random, especially if they are beginning to echo repeatedly. Something's going to be breaking in September, and it might be a full-on split from Bush with the power-driven Republicans.

Or, it might be when we'll need those troops for an Iran invasion. I don't put anything past the BFEE (Bush Family Evil Empire), and with the fact that they STILL haven't put monitoring devices on the Iraq oil pipelines, and most of the paid merc are still positioned along the NEW pipeline from Iraq to Kuwait, something smells funny. Bush, like all Presidents once they lose the ability to influence public policy, is obsessed about his legacy, and I don't doubt he'd like at least ONE clear, decisive win in his "I'm The War Decider" book.