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Hachette UK
Edition details
The Destroyer#117Deadly GenesThe DestroyerBook 1171999
Deadly Genes
- Writer
- James Mullaney
- Series creators
- Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir
BostonBio introduces its engineered livestock at a press conference. Later that night, masked intruders steal most of the animals and strike company geneticist Judith White unconscious. After brutal killings follow, CURE sends Remo to investigate whether the attacks connect to the stolen animals or to someone else.
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BostonBio geneticist Judith White presents its engineered Bos camelus-whitus animals (which she calls BCWs; the earlier horse-derived line was nicknamed BBQ) as a possible food source. After intruders steal most of the BCWs and killings begin, CURE sends Remo to investigate. HETA members Mona and Huey Janner lead an animal-liberation network that takes the animals; Billy Pierce’s separate plan to free dogs from a Salem pound is unrelated. A predator kills Billy, Clyde Simmons, Ron DePew and others; Remo later infers that a BCW ate Sadie Mayer and attacked Curt Tulle, though its prints do not match the BCWs' hoofprints. Conflicting tracks and early theories leave the killer uncertain.
Remo and Chiun eventually find six BCWs in the Janners’ barn and leave them there. The source reveals that Judith reconstructed a transformation method from an earlier BGSBS accident involving Sheila Feinberg and had been killing people for months, including her hospital roommate. During Remo’s investigation she kills a state trooper. The hunters later find Bob dead in the warehouse basement; the source does not show who killed him. White doses Ted Holstein and Evan Cleaver and trooper Dan MacGuire with an older, temporary formula. Remo kills the transformed Ted and Evan; Chiun kills MacGuire. In the burning Chelsea warehouse, Judith tips her newer formula toward Remo’s mouth, but he jerks aside and it splashes onto the floor; the book does not show him ingesting it.
Judith falls with the collapsing warehouse into Chelsea Creek, and Smith later accepts a recovered, mutilated body as hers. The embedded epilogue reveals Judith alive in rural North Dakota, regenerating an arm with starfish DNA and preparing to feed; the body’s identity remains unexplained. Smith reports that an autopsy found a deliberately destructive code in the BCWs’ DNA; Smith says eating enough of their meat could make the transformation permanent, and says he destroyed BostonBio’s remaining animal. He assumes HETA’s animals are gone, but Remo says six may remain with the Janners. Remo suspects Chiun secretly shipped an animal to Sinanju; Chiun neither confirms nor denies it.
Characters & places
SpoilersFull articles
- ChiunCharacter
- CUREOrganization
- Folcroft FourObject
- Folcroft SanatoriumPlace
- Harold W. SmithCharacter
- House of SinanjuGroup
- Remo WilliamsCharacter
- SinanjuPlace
- Sinanju (martial tradition)Lore
Characters 26
- Billy Pierce
- Bob
- Chiun
- Clyde Simmons
- Curt Tulle
- Dan MacGuire
- Dr. Judith White
- Dr. Sheila Feinberg
- Elizabeth O’Malley
- Evan Cleaver
- Hal Ketchum
- Harold W. Smith
- Huey Janner
- Kershaw Ferngard
- Linus Feculent
- Mona Janner
- Orrin Merkel
- Remo Williams
- Ron DePew
- Sadie Mayer
- Sally Edmunds
- Ted Holstein
- Todd Grautski
- Unnamed child victim
- Unnamed elderly Melrose resident
- Unnamed geneticist
Places 18
Organizations 7
Groups 1
Lore 3
Objects 1
Chapter summaries
Chapter 1
At a press conference White presents BostonBio's engineered BCWs as a potential food source. Later, while disoriented from an injection, she hears masked intruders stealing most of the animals; she sees the last two being moved toward an adjoining lab and is struck unconscious. One animal that had been brought into the main lab for the press remains there at that moment. The attackers' identity and destination are not established in this chapter.
Chapter 2
Remo removes inmates Todd Grautski and Kershaw Ferngard from their cells and carries them outside. At the wall he pushes them into the courtyard, where they fall three stories; Remo says “Upstairs” wanted a staged escape. The passage presents both men as apparently dead.
Chapter 3
Harold Smith reviews the stolen BostonBio animals and the reported assault on Judith White, then assigns Remo to investigate after bookstore owner Hal Ketchum is found mutilated. The thieves’ identities remain unknown.
Chapter 4
Using a false Department of Agriculture identity, Remo interviews Judith White and microbiologist Orrin Merkel about the stolen BCWs and Hal Ketchum’s death. White suspects HETA but has no proof; she says her animals are docile.
Chapter 5
White and Remo visit HETA’s Cambridge office. Curt Tulle denies direct knowledge of the theft and points to Billy Pierce as a possible source; after they leave, two conspirators acknowledge they liberated the BCWs and have a plan for them.
Chapter 6
Remo catches animal-rights activist Billy Pierce trying to leave his basement. Pierce says he planned to free dogs from a Salem pound and was separately due to meet the Animal Underground Railroad; White nearly strikes him, but Remo stops her.
Chapter 7
Mona and Huey Janner meet Clyde Simmons and Ron DePew at their farm. They have eight BCWs, plan to move them individually, and load one into a truck for a planned exchange near Concord.
Chapter 8
At the Concord exchange site, an unidentified animal attacks and kills Billy Pierce, Ron DePew and Clyde Simmons. Remo finds their bodies, follows tracks he interprets as a BCW’s, and recovers an artificial-looking crescent from Billy’s chest; a second set of tracks remains unexplained.
Chapter 9
Smith notices numerous calls from the shared Remo-Chiun phone account to California and wonders who Chiun contacted. Remo reports the Concord deaths and distinct track patterns; both men speculate about the animals without resolving the killer’s identity.
Chapter 10
A newspaper reports Judith White as the newest mutilation victim, but Remo finds White alive at BostonBio and identifies the corpse as Orrin Merkel. White says a BCW returned to its pen; neither Remo nor White knows which animal it is or who caused the deaths.
Chapter 11
Curt Tulle discovers Sadie Mayer's mutilated body in the HETA storeroom. After escaping the office, he is attacked by a creature and escapes into the alley. The next chapter records Remo's inference that a BCW ate Sadie and attacked Tulle, while the pawprints leave the assailant's identity uncertain.
Chapter 12
Remo finds Sadie's body and a dying Tulle. He infers that a BCW ate Sadie and assaulted Tulle, but notes pawprints unlike the animals' hoofprints and cannot establish the killer's identity. News coverage raises the reported death toll.
Chapter 13
White watches HETA’s interim council accuse the government and BostonBio of conspiring against the group, then injects herself with a brown gel she calls her final dose. She bites a geneticist’s ear and advances to feed; the transformation mechanism is not identified here.
Chapter 14
Chiun returns to Remo’s Quincy home after weeks of meditation and asks for a gift. Remo tells him about the BCWs and the deaths; their discussion leaves Chiun’s California phone calls unexplained.
Chapter 15
Smith learns that the crescent object recovered from Billy Pierce’s wound is a Pam Push-On artificial fingernail. He cannot identify its owner or explain how it reached the wound.
Chapter 16
Using Remo’s false credentials, Remo and Chiun enter BostonBio and find a dead geneticist and two penned BCWs. Chiun doubts the animals caused the death; White enters bloodied and faints, leaving her role unresolved.
Chapter 17
Remo and Smith discuss White, the artificial nail and access to the lab. Chiun asks to take a BCW to Sinanju; Smith refuses and directs Remo to return the animals, while Remo rejects an order to kill them unless necessary.
Chapter 18
At St. Eligius Hospital, White thinks of people as meals, watches nurse Elizabeth O’Malley, takes the coat belonging to the obese patient in the next bed, and leaves by a window. O’Malley later finds both beds empty; a figure carrying something is glimpsed outside, but that sighting does not establish what happened to the second patient.
Chapter 19
The narration follows White’s childhood and career, then describes her reconstruction of an earlier BGSBS experiment using DNA, saliva and packing gel. White transforms herself and later kills and mutilates her hospital roommate; the unnamed victim’s identity is not recovered.
Chapter 20
Remo and Chiun raid the Janners’ farm. After disabling armed guards, they find six BCWs in the barn; Mona says HETA tried to release them and admits the group gave one to Tulle. Remo leaves the animals at the farm.
Chapter 21
Remo tells Smith that six BCWs are with the Janners and that Chiun is with him. Smith reports another mutilated woman’s body; he infers human involvement but wrongly believes White remains hospitalized.
Chapter 22
Remo finds White at BostonBio despite Smith’s belief she is hospitalized. She wounds him, jumps through a third-floor window and escapes. Remo recognizes artificial-nail fragments in his wounds and infers White is behind the killings and BCW transport.
Chapter 23
White tells herself she has been transformed for months and identifies Dr. Sheila Feinberg’s earlier accident as the model for her deliberate method. She kills a state trooper who stops her and flees; Smith later treats “BGSBS78” as a possible year, an inference rather than a stated date.
Chapter 24
Smith reports new bodies in Waltham and Lexington and that police seek White while exonerating the BCWs. He connects BostonBio’s ownership to BGSBS research and fears White may reproduce her kind; his theory and the geneticist’s reported analysis remain attributed.
Chapter 25
Remo and Chiun patrol after a college student’s death. Remo says his prior encounter with Sheila Feinberg weighs on his pursuit of White; Chiun calls Remo an apprentice successor and warns that Sinanju would suffer if he died.
Chapter 26
Hunters Ted Holstein, Evan Cleaver and Bob search for White near Concord. White appears in animal form and attacks Ted; he fires, and she flees. Ted remains alive but unconscious, and the text does not establish whether his shot hit her.
Chapter 27
State Trooper Dan MacGuire drives Remo and Chiun to the White investigation. Chiun tears apart the car’s bulletproof partition; later, Ted is released from hospital and his companions persuade him back into the hunt.
Chapter 28
White flees through wooded areas, recalls eating an elderly Melrose resident and goes to the Chelsea warehouse district where she had hidden victims. She believes the black case she carries will help her species survive, but its contents and plan are not yet explained.
Chapter 29
Ted and Evan search the Chelsea warehouse district while Remo and Chiun look elsewhere. They fall through a rotten floor into a basement of human remains, where a child’s body is exposed by a falling rafter and Bob is later found dead. Judith appears, knocks Evan unconscious, pours the older formula down Ted’s throat after he has sobered up, then doses Evan while he is still unconscious. The source does not show who killed Bob.
Chapter 30
Chiun encounters transformed Trooper MacGuire, who says he has just met White and complains about her drink; Chiun kills him with a strike to the forehead. Meanwhile Remo evades transformed Ted and Evan as they attack together, then kills Ted with a blow to the chest and Evan with a palm strike to the face.
Chapter 31
In the burning warehouse, Judith attacks Remo, pours her older gene formula toward his mouth, and he turns aside so it splashes onto the floor. She says she hoped to make him a successor to humanity. Remo uses her fear of fire and tears her arm from the shoulder, then escapes with Chiun as the office wing collapses into Chelsea Creek with Judith in it. The chapter depicts her apparently buried, not a confirmed death.
Chapter 32
Five days later, Smith tells Remo that a mutilated body found on Deer Island was identified as Judith White from BostonBio identification and credit cards; he reports an autopsy finding a destructive code in BCW DNA and describes its alleged effects as an autopsy-based explanation. Smith says he destroyed BostonBio’s remaining animal and assumes the HETA animals are gone, while Remo says six may remain with the Janners. Remo suspects Chiun took an animal to Sinanju, but Chiun does not confirm it. In the embedded epilogue weeks later, Judith is alive in rural North Dakota, regenerating an arm with starfish DNA; the source does not identify the recovered body or show her next attack.
Editions & covers
Audio
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graphicaudio.netReferences & notes
Sources 59 references
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Destroyer_(novel_series)
- stopyourekillingme.com/D_Authors/Destroyer.html
- destroyer-books.com/bibliography.php
- www.hachette.co.uk/titles/richard-sapir/deadly-genes/9780751560664
- spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=472
- www.graphicaudio.net/destroyer-117-deadly-genes.html
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Edition and source notes
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The epilogue is embedded in indexed chapter 32 and was read as part of that chapter.
The title-level bibliography supplies this writer attribution. credited_authors is null pending title-page/cover verification; do not infer that marketed creator names drafted this volume.
Deadly Genes:
Publisher's description: A gene-engineered creature intended as a new food source may be a killer, while its creator’s plans draw Remo into the case.
Presidential clues
No current or succession assessment is available; other retained presidential references remain in context.
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