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Blood Ties — Hachette UK ebook edition
Hachette UK ebook edition

The DestroyerBook 691987

Blood Ties

When a plane crash briefly gives Remo a sense of family, he returns from the Utah desert to find a killer using his name and targeting Detroit’s automakers. Chiun’s guarded response makes the case personal, while an improbable “green car” promises to remake the industry.

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Remo kills suspected serial rapist Leon Hyskos aboard a flight, then survives a Utah crash landing after a hijacking and helps evacuate passengers before leaving secretly. In Detroit, a scarred hit man using Remo Williams’s name wounds Lyle Lavallette, kills Drake Mangan and Agatha Ballard, and attempts to shoot James Revell and Hubert Millis. Chiun is sent to guard the executives while Remo confronts the impostor, who falsely claims to be Remo’s father. Smith links the Detroit shootings to Maria DeFuria’s murder at Wildwood Cemetery through ballistics; Remo’s attempts to protect Millis fail when Millis dies naturally of heart failure. The killer is revealed as Mafia assassin Gesualdo DeFuria, Maria’s ex-husband, who borrowed the name from Remo’s nearby grave.

Maria’s son Angelo DeFuria had been executed for a killing committed by his father. Gesualdo is not Remo’s biological father; the protagonist’s own biological parents remain unknown. Lavallette hired Gesualdo to eliminate competing automakers, pretended to be a target, and fraudulently staged a refuse-powered Dynacar demonstration. Remo kills Gesualdo while defending Chiun and later kills Lavallette after the latter confesses. The unnamed President nearly orders CURE dissolved after Millis’s death but keeps it operational after Smith reports the plot solved. At Wildwood, Smith explains the DeFuria identities and Remo asks him to investigate Remo’s own still-unknown family.

Sources for this summary

Characters & places

Spoilers

Full articles

Characters 42

Places 27

Organizations 12

Groups 10

Lore 3

Chapter summaries29 chapters · spoilers

  1. Chapter 1

    Maria DeFuria’s visions lead her to Wildwood Cemetery, where Gesualdo DeFuria shoots her; her grave visit and death become the origin of the Detroit plot.

  2. Chapter 2

    Remo describes his apparent execution and CURE’s creation to Hyskos, identifies him as the Ravine Rapist, and kills him before landing.

  3. Chapter 3

    Chiun negotiates CURE/Sinanju payments and asks for Disneyland; in Detroit, a scarred gunman who calls himself Remo buys a weapon and begins his hit list.

  4. Chapter 4

    The hijacked flight makes a desert crash landing; Remo rescues passengers, then kills the hijacker in vengeance; the aircraft burns.

  5. Chapter 5

    Lavallette unveils plans for a revolutionary invention; the scarred hit man wounds him at a press event. Smith learns the President wants CURE to investigate.

  6. Chapter 6

    Remo protects crash survivors, disables Johnson from wandering, shares farewell with Lorna; Smith sends Chiun to protect executives against a suspected freelance Remo.

  7. Chapter 7

    Chiun arrives at National Autos and confirms President sent him; Remo leaves after rescue and tells Smith he is in Utah, not Detroit.

  8. Chapter 8

    The hidden client directs the gunman toward Mangan; Chiun protects Mangan but a ricochet wounds Chiun, and the impostor kills Mangan and Agatha Ballard.

  9. Chapter 9

    Smith considers whether the assassin could be Remo’s father after finding the name Remo Williams; Remo returns to Detroit and discovers Chiun is hiding information.

  10. Chapter 10

    Lavallette unveils refuse-conversion claims; the impostor shoots at Revell/Millis; Chiun protects them and Remo fails to catch the gunman.

  11. Chapter 11

    Remo questions Chiun about the gunman’s use of his name and admits he has been thinking about family. Chiun hides what he knows, then calls Smith and assures him no more automakers will die.

  12. Chapter 12

    Remo realizes the gunman used his name, turns back toward Millis; Smith reads a wire report of a woman killed at the Remo grave and suspects she may be his mother.

  13. Chapter 13

    Remo enters fortified American Autos complex but tracks gunman on an adjacent roof; gunman claims he is Remo Williams from Newark and Remo’s father.

  14. Chapter 14

    Smith matches the Newark Jane Doe’s .22-caliber murder to the Detroit shootings and grows concerned when Remo does not return to Folcroft.

  15. Chapter 15

    The gunman emotionally manipulates Remo; Chiun reveals he knew of the claimed parent and says he must die; Remo obstructs him, causing Chiun to disown him.

  16. Chapter 16

    Narration explains that a long-dead President picked Smith to head CURE. The current President threatens dissolution after Millis is injured; on a call, Chiun says Remo is with his white-skinned father and then falsely tells Smith that Remo is dead.

  17. Chapter 17

    Lavallette hires Brock Savage and his team to kill the gunman who has been disrupting his plan.

  18. Chapter 18

    Remo reflects on the alleged father, his orphanhood, and his estrangement from Chiun; the gunman is privately considering killing or abandoning him.

  19. Chapter 19

    Lavallette’s client wants Millis finished and then Lavallette hit; the gunman accepts Millis as next target while still guessing at the client’s identity.

  20. Chapter 20

    Smith infers the grave victim and gunman are Remo’s parents; he tasks Chiun with protecting Lavallette and asks to take the assassin alive.

  21. Chapter 21

    The alleged father asks Remo to kill the comatose executive to finish his contract; Remo refuses and struggles with the request.

  22. Chapter 22

    Smith reflects on framing Remo and staging his execution, then realizes the corpse in the grave is an unidentified homeless man and names D. Colt and DeFuria stones.

  23. Chapter 23

    Remo enters the hospital and reaches Millis but declines to kill him; Millis dies of heart failure while in a coma.

  24. Chapter 24

    Lavallette’s internal narration reveals he hired the killer and named himself as the first target to conceal his plan. He considers the killer a loose end and plans to remove him; this is narration of Lavallette’s thoughts, not a spoken confession.

  25. Chapter 25

    Lavallette admits he wants to take over the Big Three and delay production; after Millis dies, President decides to order CURE dissolved but cannot reach Smith.

  26. Chapter 26

    Chiun’s narration reveals he lied to Smith that Remo was dead to protect him; at Dynacar, Chiun nonlethally defeats Brock Savage and his team.

  27. Chapter 27

    The gunman returns to kill Lavallette; Chiun interrogates him, then Remo intervenes when he points his pistol at Chiun and kills him in a defensive strike.

  28. Chapter 28

    Lavallette admits corporate motive and battery-powered Dynacar fraud; Remo kills him. President hears CURE solved the plot and says it remains operational.

  29. Chapter 29

    At Wildwood, Smith tells Remo the gunman was Gesualdo DeFuria, not Remo’s father, and explains the Maria/Angelo DeFuria history. Remo asks Smith to find his biological family.

Other mentions19 names & references

Editions & covers

Edition · cover shown

Hachette UK

2015-05-07

ISBN 9780751559118

Edition details

References & notes

Sources 28 references
  • witness:00000201:ch04:p0015
  • witness:00000201:ch11:p0048
  • witness:00000201:ch11:p0041
  • witness:00000201:ch11:p0054
  • witness:00000201:ch10:p0110
  • witness:00000201:ch10:p0114
  • witness:00000201:ch02:p0017
  • witness:00000201:ch02:p0071
  • witness:00000201:ch04:p0020
  • witness:00000201:ch08:p0128
  • witness:00000201:ch14:p0037
  • witness:00000201:ch23:p0121
  • witness:00000201:ch24:p0037
  • witness:00000201:ch27:p0089
  • witness:00000201:ch28:p0050
  • witness:00000201:ch28:p0079
  • witness:00000201:ch29:p0014
  • witness:00000201:ch29:p0019
  • witness:00000201:ch29:p0025
  • witness:00000201:ch29:p0051
Edition and source notes

Names are the bibliography’s title-level “written by” attribution key, not a verified edition byline. credited_authors is null because no first-edition cover/title page was checked. A creator name in the general franchise metadata must not be treated as proof of sole drafting.

registration-declared first publication: 1987-07-20. CPRS record field is the registrant/depositor-reported first-publication date, not independent retail/on-sale verification; no print copy inspected. Source

Blood Ties:

Publisher's description: Hachette supplies only its general series overview here; it characterizes the novels as action-led stories mixing comedy and mysticism.

Story timeframe

Coarse estimate from the assumed incumbent’s historical presidency. The term range is context, not a claim that the plot spans the term or that a particular event occurs at either endpoint.

Historical term dates: Source 1

Presidential clues

Presidential clues

Current U.S. President: retained hypothesis — Ronald Reagan (possible actor-President allusion; unnamed in Book 69).

Ronald Reagan (possible actor-President allusion; unnamed in Book 69)

qualified allusion; exact FBI film-role wording uncorroborated

Unnamed incumbent U.S. President

Ronald Reagan (possible actor-President allusion; unnamed in Book 69)

  • Calls Smith after Lavallette is wounded and requests consideration of Remo and Chiun (ch05:p104–15).
  • Confirms to Mangan that he sent Chiun to protect him (ch07:p95–109).
  • After Millis dies, decides to order CURE disbanded but does not reach Smith; after Lavallette’s scheme is reported, says CURE can remain operational (ch25:p27–35; ch28:p67–83).
  • At ch25:p31 the President says he once played an FBI man in a movie. This is an in-story former acting role, not an identified name or proof of real FBI service.

qualified allusion; exact FBI film-role wording uncorroborated

The President is unnamed and no story year is given. His former movie-acting clue makes a Ronald Reagan allusion plausible, but the specific “FBI man” description is not verified by the official Reagan Library filmography, which lists him as “Brass” Bancroft in Secret Service serials. Neither clue settles identity.

Unidentified President in CURE origin account

John F. Kennedy (qualified series-context inference; unnamed in Book 69)

  • Remo explains that one of the Presidents created the secret agency and hired Dr. Harold W. Smith (ch02:p17–24).
  • No personal name, date, administration or direct identification appears.

moderate cross-book inference

Remo names neither this President nor a date. The narrator separately says a long-dead President selected Smith; the roles may overlap, but the novel does not explicitly identify them as one person. Book 26 explicitly attributes CURE’s origin and secret Smith appointment to John Kennedy, supporting a qualified series-context candidate. This does not make Kennedy a locally observed name or expressly equate Book 69’s two retrospective accounts.

Unnamed long-dead President who selected Smith

John F. Kennedy (qualified series-context inference; unnamed in Book 69)

  • Narrator says the President had picked Smith to head CURE and explains his rationale (ch16:p6–9).
  • No proper name or date appears. “Long-dead” distinguishes this person from the story’s current President, but connection to the CURE founder clue at ch02 remains unresolved.

moderate cross-book inference

The narrator does not name the President or date the appointment. Remo’s earlier account says a President created CURE and hired Smith, so the same officeholder is plausible but not expressly confirmed. Book 26 explicitly attributes CURE’s origin and secret Smith appointment to John Kennedy, supporting a qualified series-context candidate. This does not make Kennedy a locally observed name or expressly equate Book 69’s two retrospective accounts.

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