BLOOD ON THE MOON

RUFF JUSTICE

Number 3 of 28

By Warren T. Longtree

Signet, December 1981

With her father dangerously ill, lovely Baroness Sophia Mancek was desperately determined to track down her missing sister. And once she’d decided that Ruffin T. Justice was the only man for the job, Sophia made him the kind of offer no real man could resist. But Ruff soon realized the seductive Sophia had roped him into much more than he bargained for, as he found himself riding a trail that led through treacherous snow-filled passes and straight into a bullet-blazing battle with gunrunners and renegade Indians….

Warren T. Longtree is a pseudonym used by Paul Lederer. I’ve read a lot of books by him and enjoyed them all so was this one as good? The book seems to have a straight-forward plot but it isn’t long before the author throws in some twists and the bodies begin to pile up.

Sophia Mancek’s train carries an interesting variety of people and shortly after the journey begins Justice finds one of them dead in his sleeping compartment. Why has he been killed and who did it? After Justice disposes of the body, he’s surprised that no-one seems to miss the dead man. Justice soon has his suspicions about some of his fellow travellers, and this leads to him being on the wrong end of a savage beating. Pounded to a bloody pulp with broken ribs you have to wonder how he can survive, never mind find Sophia’s missing sister. 

Lederer’s descriptions of land, people and action are very good. He soon had me wondering just who was telling the truth about anything and what their real motives were. It seems as if Justice shouldn’t trust anyone and he soon finds himself driven by his need for vengeance due to the death of a friend. 

Ruff Justice is an adult series so the book contains some explicit sex scenes but these only last for a couple of pages so don’t take up too much of the story and can be easily skipped if you don’t like reading this kind of thing.

There were a couple of scenes that stretched my belief a little, such as what Justice manages to do whilst suffering from broken bones and a battered body, but who wants to let reality get in the way of a good yarn? Because of this Blood on the Moon is probably not the best book I’ve read by Paul Lederer, but it was still an entertaining read and I was left looking forward to seeing what kind of scape Ruff Justice gets into in the next book in the series.

Hot Lead: Adult Western Special

HOT LEAD #3:

THE ADULT WESTERN SPECIAL

The Paperback Fanatic, May 2019

Hot Lead is a beautifully produced fanzine and this, the third, concentrates on the rise of the adult western. This issue contains 52 pages of fascinating articles backed-up by many reproductions of book covers and associated artwork, all illustrated in full colour.

The main feature, Sex and Six Guns by Paul Bishop, delves into series adult westerns, looking at a variety of them in well researched detail. This section of the fanzine taking up sixteen pages and is essential reading for anyone who enjoys this kind of western.

Three western series get their own sections, Cimarron and Ruff Justice, both written about by editor Justin Marriott and The Trailsman by Steve Myall. All three providing some great insights into why these contributors liked these books so much. 

Then there’s a terrific article by Andreas Decker that looks at how the American series Lassiter by Jack Slade took Germany by storm. Starting with some of the original novels, the German publisher then continued the series and the number of books that have been put out featuring Lassiter is just staggering. Those long running American series like Longarm and The Gunsmith, don’t even come close! 

The final article by Ian Millsted moves away from adult westerns and is a personal look at his top ten western comics and it offers a couple of surprise entries in the countdown. One especially bringing back fond memories for me, that of El Mestizo in Battle Picture Weekly, a comic I read without fail and it now has me wanting to track down a copy of the mentioned hardback book of this comic strip. 

This issue of Hot Lead, is a must read for any fan of adult westerns. It, and the two previous fanzines, provide a lot of informative and entertaining reading that fans of this genre will find themselves returning to time and again. 

Ruff Justice #2

 NIGHT OF THE APACHE
as by Warren T. Longtree
Signet, September 1981

The Arizona desert – home to Casqual and his Apache raiders. Fearless and merciless, they struck like lightning, killing settlers and disappearing back into the sheltering desert. The local cavalry troops seemed helpless to stop them. So Ruffin T. Justice was sent to catch the renegades and put an end to their senseless slaughtering.

But for Justice the desert held many other perils besides Casqual. Traps as treacherously alluring as the welcoming arms of an auburn-haired beauty and as deadly dangerous as a bullet in the back…

Ruff Justice is a scout for the US Army in this adult series that ran for 28 books, the first being published in September 1981 and the last October 1986. I believe the author behind the pseudonym of Warren T. Longtree is Paul Lederer.

What seems to be a pretty straightforward assignment soon becomes much more involved when Justice arrives at Fort Bowie, Arizona, and finds the fort’s commander, Colonel Lasseman, resents his presence. In fact he soon finds himself ordered to stay behind while the army attempt to track down Casqual. Something is definitely suspicious here but Justice’s endeavours to discover just what is going on are thwarted every time. In fact so much so he leaves the fort and sets himself up as the new Indian Agent on the nearby Reservation in the hopes of unravelling the mystery.

The book is fast moving and has plenty of action before Justice manages to work his way through all the entwined twists and turns of the plot to solve, and deal with, just what is going on in this part of Arizona, which includes the reasons he’s not welcome at the fort, a slave mine, and the problems at the reservation.

All in all an exciting and satisfactory read.