The Last Alchemist
by Richard Sapir and William Murray
His name was Remo and he was supposed to let the little girl drown.

The Stoned Gold Bug

The Philosopher's Stone. The key to turning base metals into gold. Everyone knew it didn't exist. Except it did. And now the last of the alchemists, Harrison Caldwell, had his hands on it and was reaching out to grab the nuclear power that would fuel his dream for bottomless wealth-and create a golden age of hell on earth.

Only Remo and Chiun could stop him...if they could get past the army of the highest-paid killers on the globe...if they could survive the attacks of Fancisco Braun, the golden-haired murderer, whose reputation for being the #1 assassin in his deadly trade was well earned...and if they could break the power of the magic metal that reduced governments to servants and turned even Remo Williams into its slave....

Review: Not one of my favorite books, but still pretty good. It's hard to get too involved in a book when it has a weak villain, and Caldwell isn't too much of a threat. On the negative side, Remo is powered down again in this book, not by a memory loss (that's coming next book), but by radiation. It's the kryptonite thing rearing its ugly head. (For my Remo/Kryptonite annalogy, see #59 The Arms of Kali). On the plus side, there are many good scenes between Remo and Chiun. Chiun's problem of revealing Remo's parentage in the Scrolls of Sinanju is amusing, and Remo saving the drowning girl was nice. Worth the read, but not an edge-of-the-seat thriller.

The Last Alchemist isn't sterling, but gets .