Created by L.V. Roper
Pseudonym of Lester Virgil Roper
Other pseudonyms include Samantha Lester
(1931-1998)
— back cover blurb
What made the Red Man red?
How about JERRY “RENEGADE” ROE, the definite star of the show here. We’re told he’s of Cherokee descent, but just to make sure we get it, they make him pretty hard to miss, what with his shoulder-length black hair and penchant for headbands and moccasins. By comparison, the senior partner Stuart “Stu” Worth is pretty strait-laced, a WASP yuppie straight-man. Both Stu and cute little long-suffering secretary Frances ‘Fran’ Belmont are foils for “Renegade”‘s freewheeling antics.
Renegade, Stu and Fran appeared in only two “Caper” novels, both pretty much cheesefests: The Red Horse Caper (1975) and The Emerald Chicks Caper(1976). It was just another swinging seventies PBO series hoping to cash in on the Men’s Adventure craze brought to you from Popular Library, the same folks who gave us Patrick Hardy, the “sensuous sleuth.”
The problem wasn’t the gloriously incorrect and often offensive view of Native Americans (Roe vows to make every white “chick” he meets pregnant so that he can make “America a red race again,” but that the series was actually kinda dull. Joe Kenney of Glorious Trash nailed it when he tagged The Red Horse Caper as “a slow-moving mystery with very, very little in the way of violent action or steamy sex… Jerry “Renegade” Roe doesn’t even own a gun, so there goes the cool cover painting. There is however a blonde in a white bikini, but she barely even says hello to our hero.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In his career, Lester Virgil “Sam” Roper published eleven novels under the pen names of “Samantha Lester” and “L.V. Roper” (including a standalone private eye novel, Hookers Don’t Go to Heaven featuring Kansas City gumshoe Mike Saxon). Born in Girard, Kansas in 1931, he received a bachelor of arts in journalism from Pittsburg State University and attended graduate school at the University of Oklahoma, majoring in creative writing. Along the way, he worked as a welder, a barber and a Fuller Brush salesman and served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War as an electrician. He taught writing at the Labette Community College, Parsons, and vocational education at the Southeast Kansas Vo-Tech in Columbus, and served in the Kansas House of Representatives for nine years, retiring in 1991.
THE EVIDENCE
- “White man speak with forked tongue”
— yes, Roe actually says this.
NOVELS
- The Red Horse Caper (1975) | Buy this book
- The Emerald Chicks Caper (1976) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- O’Neil’s Big Easy Favorites
And Other Louisiana Eyes - Private Eyes by the Number
P.I.s in Men’s Adventure Books
Report respectfully submitted by David Nobriga. Additional information by Kevin Burton Smith.
