Update / Delete on Joined Tables

Hey All,
   I have tried searching everywhere and none of the solutions seem to work.  I'm using CIv3 with a MySQL back end.  Below is a simple outline of the issue.

Table 1 - Character
PK: ID
Some Data Field
Foreign Key: party_id

Table 2 - Party
PK: ID
Some Data fields
user_id

So the character table links to the party table like so:
character.party_id = party.id

And I only want to update (or delete from) the Character table *IF* the supplied user ID to the model function matches the user_id in the Party table.

My MySQL is a little rusty, but in MSSQL it would look like:

Code:

update c
set c.<information>= <input data>
from character c
  inner join party p on c.party_id = p.id
where
c.id = <character_id>
and
p.user_id = <logged in user id>

Some solutions I've tried without success:
https://forum.codeigniter.com/thread-637...pdate+join
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4830...pdate-quer
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3197...using-join
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9578...ith-a-join
https://developer-paradize.blogspot.com/...using.html

I really don't want to have to hand-write SQL code, nor do I want to do an initial "select" query to make sure the user is linked to the correct party to be able to update (or delete) this entry.

I'm sure I'm missing something simple with this.