4/5/22

His name was Remo and he was going to do something about pollution in America.

This is one of the sillier entries in the Destroyer, and for me that makes it one of the more enjoyable ones. Not only is Missing Link totally bereft of any mystical Sinanju “I am Shiva” subplots, it is also completely devoid of killer robots, Bond villains, or sci-fi gadgetry. What we’re left with is some good old-fashioned political/cultural satire, funny dialogue, and – of course – plenty of well-intended violence.

Since the top-secret organization CURE works directly for the President of the United States, the president occasionally makes a brief appearance, and mild allusions are made to the president currently residing at the time of publication, usually through a turn of phrase or a vague connectable reference. In the case of Missing Link, however, any attempts at subtlety are immediately abandoned. The plot involves the sudden disappearance of the President’s brother-in-law Bobby Jack Billings (the novel’s titular “Missing Link”), a beer-swilling alcoholic redneck who spits out racist/sexist slurs as frequently as he urinates in public. With the publication date occurring at the end of the Jimmy Carter administration, it doesn’t take a huge leap to connect the fictional President’s brother-in-law to President Carter’s real-life brother Billy Carter, who was also in trouble with the media at the time for some rather poorly chosen words about “Arabians” and “Jews” (Google it). Bobby Jack Billings is also portrayed as making behind-the-scenes deals with foreign entities in exchange for influencing Presidential decisions, another direct reference to Billy Carter’s direct dealings with Libya.

Murphy’s satirical look at current events also takes us into the imagined struggles of Jimmy Carter, as the Destroyer Universe’s version of Carter is shown as a fairly serious and intelligent man dealing not only with a rogue brother-in-law, but a country on the brink of economic collapse and international cataclysm, a completely oblivious press, and internal struggles as well. The latter results in yet another direct reference to current events in a one-sided Newhart-style phone conversation between the president and Andy, during which he attempts to explain to Andy that “We’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys.” In this case, “Andy” is Andrew Young, who at the time was the US Ambassador to the UN, and the conversation is a satirical take on the controversy that arose when Young drew criticism for responding to Russia’s treatment of political prisoners buy stating that “America has its own political prisoners,” imprisoned African-American activists.

The interesting thing about all of this is that, even though most Destroyer novels have a decidedly right-leaning ideology (left-wing activist groups appear as clueless aggressors twice in the book), and half of the satire of this particular novel is directed at the Carter White House, this fictional version of Jimmy Carter is actually sympathetic, portraying him as a genuinely logical and sane man attempting to fill the role of leader in a world gone mad. It’s a refreshing counterpoint to a story filled with almost universal disdain, and that combined with the somewhat atypical ending seems to inform Remo’s loss of faith later in the series, as the author appears to concede that in a world this broken, the only people losing are the ones trying to make sense of it all.

Political intrigue aside, the reality-based plot combined with the lack of Sinanju mysticism clears the stage for Remo and Chiun to do what they do best – kill people while arguing with each other. This results in the greatest joy of Missing Link, for while the political and cultural satire can be a bit heavy-handed and predictable at times, the constant smart-ass bickering between them – this time revolving around Chiun’s new obsession with competing in the Olympics – is a constant delight that makes the whole adventure one of the more enjoyable light-hearted Destroyer novels. ( )