Spectros #1: Silverado, by Logan Winters. Tower Books,1981. 159 pages.

Logan Winters was one of several pseudonyms used bywriter Paul Joseph Lederer (July 2, 1944 – January 30, 2016). Some others wereOwen G. Irons, C. J. Sommers, Warren T. Longtree, and Paul Ledd. He also wrotebooks under his own name, particularly a series called the “Indian Heritage”series. I haven’t read anything other than Spectros #1 so far but I will likelypick up some of his other works.

So, to the review. The book was billed as a kind ofweird western. I agree it fits that mold, although the primary influence herewould be the pulps such as Doc Savage. Doctor Spectros, a master magician ofunknown age, has a crew that work with him in the same vein as Doc Savage.These include gunslinger Ray Featherskill, brute/mute Montak, and aninscrutable foreign fighter named Inkada.

The gist of the story is that another sorcerer,Blackschuster, has kidnapped Spectros’ love, Kirstina, and has been keeping heralive through magical means. Alive but unconscious. Spectros is after him withhis crew.

What I liked: The prose here is very good. Crisp,vivid, clean. There’s quite a lot of poetry in it, which always sets my littleheart a flutter. This is the main reason why I’d read more by this writer. Inaddition, the characters are broadly drawn but interesting, and I liked thecrew much better than Doc Savage’s crew. They weren’t played for laughs—for themost part—and given serious roles to fulfill.

What I didn’t like: Though this is the “first” in aseries of four books, it seems clear the reader is expected to know a lot ofbackstory already. The characters aren’t really introduced. They are sprinkledin like a cook adding ingredients to a stew. Now, I’m a fan of action up front,but I also expect that characters with a long and complicated history getintroduced fairly early in a book so the reader has some orientation to theirstory and why it is meaningful. There was almost none here. I got moreorientation from the back cover blurb than the book itself.

In addition, the story jumps around between thecharacters somewhat willy-nilly, without much of a common thread to connectthem. As I was reading about Lederer’s work, he made a comment in an interviewthat made me think this was his general approach to writing. I’m a pantsermostly myself but I work very hard to make the multiple characters andplotlines connect.

Another issue, which may not be Lederer’s fault, isthat characters and scenes sometimes changed in the middle of a page withoutany break or asterisks, or anything to indicate said break. That makes for somedifficult reading. And add to that quite a few typos and you’ve got someconfusion.

Overall, I can only give this book two stars. Theprose deserves four or five but all the other things dragged the work down tothe point that I was glad to finish so I could move on to a better story. Thestory is the thing.

As for Lederer, he was born in California and died inhis early seventies from a brain aneurysm. He served a term in the Air Force,in the Intelligence Arm, and was widely travelled in Europe, the Middle East,and Asia. He wrote over 100 novels, most of them westerns or with westernconnections. Sounds like he would have been an interesting fellow to meet.