Forgotten Books: Ute Revenge - Paul Ledd (Paul Joseph Lederer)

Paul Ledd (real name Paul Joseph Lederer) was a very prolific author of series Westerns during the Eighties, working on, among others, Shelter, Ruff Justice, Easy Company, and Lone Star. As Logan Winters, he wrote the cult favorite supernatural Western series SPECTROS. UTE REVENGE, however, is a stand-alone novel, and a good one.

The story begins in 1850 with the arrival in the Colorado Rockies of Georges Lacroix, a French fur trapper. After a clash with Ute Indians, they burn down the cabin Lacroix has built, so to even the score with them, he kidnaps a woman of their tribe and takes her as his wife. When she gives birth to a son, the Utes regard this as a stain on their honor and set out to kill Lacroix, the woman Morning Light, and their son Mantaka. The Utes have their revenge on Lacroix and Morning Light, but Mantaka escapes and grows up pretty much on his own, able to speak Ute and French, but no English. He is befriended by some prospectors and helps them find gold, which brings even more people into the mountains. Years pass as Mantaka grows into a massive man and a great hunter. When a town is founded and Mantaka runs afoul of the criminals who are trying to take over, he is framed for a murder and has to take to the high country again. And all the time, the Utes are still after him. On the run from all his enemies, he becomes known as The Savage, because he still can't speak English and communicate with people.

It seems to me that Lederer is trying to write a Western version of Tarzan, at least in some respects. I'm not sure he manages to pull that off, but UTE REVENGE is still an entertaining, fast-moving story. Lederer writes in a very readable style, with plenty of action and some nice descriptive passages. I think he intended this to be a more serious novel than his series work (which makes me wonder if the generic UTE REVENGE was an editor's retitling of the book). For the most part, he succeeds.

Lederer stopped writing for a while after the late Eighties/early Nineties, but he's returned to the Western field in recent years, publishing a number of Black Horse Westerns under his old pseudonyms Logan Winters and Owen G. Irons. It's a welcome return as far as I'm concerned.