Richard Sapir

Richard Ben Sapir (; July 27, 1936 – January 27, 1987) was an American author, best known for ''The Destroyer'' series of novels that he co-created with Warren Murphy.

The first ''Destroyer'' was written in 1963, while Sapir worked as a city hall reporter in Jersey City and Murphy served as secretary to the city's mayor. Ahead of its time with a plot centered upon a brash young westerner trained in the martial arts by a master assassin from North Korea, they failed to get it published because, according to Murphy, none of them knew anything about publishing. But Sapir's father was a dentist, and one of his patients was a secretary at Pinnacle Books, which agreed to show the manuscript to a Pinnacle editor. The novel was eventually published in June 1971, spawning a highly successful adventure series with over 30 million copies in print by the late 1990s.

Prior to co-creating ''The Destroyer'', Sapir worked as an editor and in public relations. In addition to ''The Destroyer'' series, Sapir wrote five novels: ''Bressio'' (1975), ''The Far Arena'' (1978), ''The Body'' (1983), ''Spies'' (1984), and ''Quest'' (1987), a modern-day search for the Holy Grail. ''The Body'', which was made into a movie in 2001, is about a Jewish archaeologist who finds a skeleton underneath an Arab shopkeeper's basement that might be the body of Jesus and the American Jesuit priest who is sent by the Vatican to investigate.

Richard Sapir was a graduate of Columbia University and lived with his wife in New Hampshire until his death in 1987 from a heart attack. Provided by Wikipedia