Richard Ben Sapir (; 1936–1987) is best known for '' The Destroyer'' series of novels that he co-created with

Warren Murphy Warren Burton Murphy (September 13, 1933 – September 4, 2015) was an American author, most famous as the co-creator of '' The Destroyer'' series, the basis for the film '' Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins''. Early life Murphy was born in ...

.Sf-encyclopedia.com
/ref> The first ''Destroyer'' was written in 1963, while Sapir worked as a city hall reporter in

Jersey City Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

, the book went unpublished until June 1971 but eventually spawned a highly successful adventure series with over 30 million copies in print by the late 1990s.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 ''The Far Arena'' is a 1978 novel by Richard Sapir, writing under the slightly modified pen name of Richard Ben Sapir. It chronicles the adventures of Eugeni, a Roman gladiator from the age of Domitian, who, due to a highly unlikely series of ev ...

'' (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 Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and lived with his wife in

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

until his death in 1987 from a heart attack.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sapir, Richard 1936 births 1987 deaths 20th-century American novelists Columbia University alumni American male novelists 20th-century American male writers Writers from New York City Novelists from New York (state)