Destry Rides Again

by Max Brand

Famed fighter Harry Destry comes back from jail a changed man. The town thinks he no longer has what it takes to defend himself, but Destry's innocent act covers a plot for vengeance against the men who set him up.

Genres: Westerns, Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Adventure, Pulp, Novels

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Frederick Schiller Faust (see also Frederick Faust), aka Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evin Evan, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, Lee Bolt, Peter Dawson, Martin Dexter, Dennis Lawson, M.B., Hugh Owen, Nicholas Silver

Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.

Reviews

[Charles van Buren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what it could have been

This novel, or at least its title, was the basis for the great 1939 movie directed by George Marshall and starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey, Billy Gilbert, Bill Cody Jr., Lillian Yarbo, and Una Merkel. Fortunately for movie lovers, little of the book, other than its title, was used in the movie.

The book is one of Max Brand's most famous titles. It remained in print for decades after it was first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. The basic plot idea is quite good and there are flashes of brilliance in the prose. In the end, however, it misses being a great novel, pulled down by anachronisms, some unbelievable action and most importantly, by a very unbelievable essential part of the plot.

Destry was indeed unjustly convicted of armed robbery but that was not the fault of the jurors. He foolishly confessed to the crime at least twice. Apparently just so the sheriff would stop bothering him and let him sleep. Part of the loot was found on his person. He offered no real defense in court. Yet Destry blamed the jurors and, upon release from prison, set out to murder them all. Bah! Max Brand was capable of making this a great novel but failed to do so.

I downloaded this book via Kindle Unlimited.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Max Brand is one of the pseudonyms used by the prolific American writer, Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944). Using the Max Brand pseudonym, he wrote hundreds of western stories and novels as well as creating the Dr. Kildare character. Destry Rides Again was first published in 1930, in a series of installments under the title "Twelve Peers" in Frank Blackwell's Western Story Magazine.

It was republished, as a paperback, later that year under the title Destry Rides Again. It remains one of Brand's most famous works and had been in print for 70 years after its first publication. There were three film versions made of it between 1932 and 1954. However, these owe little to the novel other than their name; the plots are completely unrelated to Brand's story, and Destry's first name is also changed from Harry to Tom in the movies. The most famous version was made in 1939 and starred Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart.

I have had this old Triangle hardcover copy on my shelves for years and decided to finally read it. DESTRY is a typical western of its time. It takes place mostly in and around the fictional town of Wham, Texas. The protagonist, Harry Destry, was a young hotheaded man with a reputation for fighting and reckless behavior. He had fought and bested many of his peers when he was growing up in Wham and was therefore not well-liked. But then he is framed for the robbery of the Express train and is sentenced to ten years in prison by a jury of his peers. Destry looks down on the twelve jurors and feels that he was sentenced unjustly and vows to get vengeance on them. He ends up being released after six years and as in the title he rides again to call on these twelve peers for the wrong he feels they did him. But is he really taking vengeance on the right people? Who actually framed him for the robbery?

Like I said, this is definitely a novel of its time. Of course, Destry also has a love interest in the story, Charlotte Dangerfield, the daughter of a wealthy rancher. The novel was full of action but it also contained some surprising racist remarks including using the N word on more that one occasion. For example, one discussion between Charlotte and her father: "I never seen anything the way you throw money away on them n*****s, the worthless good-for-nothin's! . . . Money is no good for n*****s, said Dangerfield. Money and votes ain't no good for them." The author was obviously against allowing blacks to vote. I know that this attitude was included in many works of the time but it still was somewhat triggering. I guess this book is considered a classic but I would only mildly recommend it.

[WJEP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Destry is "a waster, a lazy loafer, a fighter, a no-good citizen." But after being framed for a hold-up, he becomes The Cowpuncher of Monte Cristo. Cover-to-cover score-settling:

"guns in the dark, lies and sneak-in' treachery!"

The story is more than just Western action, Brand is a philosopher of vengeance. I liked this more than Dumas' story and it is 1000 pages shorter.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, forget the film. Aside from the title, film and book are quite different.
This is a better than average pulp western and, as is the case with many of Brand's westerns, has an anti-hero in search of an identity. In addition Destry is focussed on revenge and his main antagonist is his closest friend. The plot is well constructed with well drawn subsidiary characters and provides a number of interesting twists.
All in all this is an enjoyable and undemanding work.

[Randy Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lively and Action Packed, but Very Dated

Published in 1930, Destry Rides Again is a classic of the western genre, but parts of it have not aged well. The plot - a top gunman seeks revenge on the jury that sent him away for a crime he didn't commit - still holds up, and the story moves quickly from scene to scene with lots of great action. There are also some well written insights on politics, good and evil, and other things that take the book to a slightly higher level than pure pulp fiction. Stylistically, however, it's very old-fashioned in its phrasing, which makes it a bit of a tough read for the modern audience. The real problem, though, is its racist language, with the N-word used liberally by characters throughout the book, and a few other ethnic slurs tossed in for good measure. Given when it was written and the setting, one can somewhat excuse Brand's use of these terms as being true to the context, but for the modern reader it's still very jarring, and many people will no doubt find it deeply offensive. Sadly, this may be one of those books that has out-lived its time.

[AndrewP · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have heard the the title of this in reference to the movie, but have never actually seen it.
A classic tale of revenge, Destry is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit and when he gets out, many years he goes looking for the twelve men of the jury who convicted him.
Not a bad story but somewhat transparent in terms of plot. Tracking down the movie I found there are two versions. The story was made in 1932 with Tom Mix and again in 1939 with James Stewart and Marlena Dietrich.

[Charles Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always thought most westerns were a bit shallow. This is an exception. I don't know Max Brand's stories but I like this tale. It has some very good prose, some interesting details of western life that I didn't expect and an outcome I thought I had anticipated but didn't.

Two things to watch for, one is his "vulgar" language. His characters speak as the times dictate. The second thing, along those lines, is his use of misspelled dialect. This is a particular bone of mine but in the 30s this was the way you wrote dialect, I guess. Nowadays I think it would not be acceptable.

All the elements are there: treachery, revenge, heroes, love regained, good guys, bad guys, romance, horse chases, shoot outs, dust, done-'em-wrong. But in the end, love and justice prevail. Nothing new there, and the language is flowery, and I like how he describes the people and the places. In the lawless west, there is even a telephone!
###

[Joe Santoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harry Destry is you typical western ne'er do well.. good at fighting and causing trouble.. with a few friends and mounting enemies. When the express gets robbed outside of town, and his enemies decide to be rid of him by blaming him for it, well, a few months to relax in the slammer sounded just fine... until he found it would be 10 long years. Destry returns a broken man... but it's quickly revealed as just a front, and his new mission in life is to punish the 12 jurors that send him to prison.

As is typical of Max Brand, this book has larger than life characters right out of a 60s western (I suspect most of those followed Brand's formula), beautiful descriptions and a 100% predictable plot. If one is in the mood for a western, this is a pretty good one of the type, but just don't expect anything else.

[Debbie Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is a good one, but it had a hard time keeping my interest. The characters were very one dimensional and the dialog was stilted. I picked it up because of the movie by the same name with Jimmie Stewart. There didn't seem to be anything in common except the title. I like Louis L'Amour better. Could be a fun beach or plane book.

[Harmon Ford, Jr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the plot. Didn't like the authors idea of language. It made the reading tedious.

Liked the plot. Didn't like the way the author tried to use language and verbage he thought existed at the time of the story. It made the reading tedious

[Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sought this novel out based on the recommendation of Billy Parham in Cormac McCarthy's "Cities of the Plain". Meat and potatoes, old-school western. Grittier than Zane Grey. At one point the protagonist literally "heads them off at the pass". Hedley Lamarr would not approve.

[Holly Wheeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth the read. Destry character development is interesting, but it was Willy's story that kept me reading.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people who review this book severely do this, undoubtedly, out of a sense of civic servitude. The book is written in 1930 and contains the vernacular of the century just prior. This is not a racist work, it is a period work and historical fiction. The story is riveting these 90 years later and still causes a jump in the heart rate during the exciting chase sequences. The story is solid and engaging, the prose is not poetic but definitely colorful.
This book shares only the title with the Jimmy Stewart movie. There are no plot points that the two share except for Destry being a deputy and in the book that is a very short lived prospect. I bought this book because I thought it was a novel that the movie was based on. I can be satisfied with them each as individual entities.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Destry is a proud and boastful punk who likes to go around proving he can out-ride, out-shoot, and generally out-do any man he meets. He gets blamed for a train robbery he didn't commit, and the jury sentences him to prison because they don't like him. When he gets out of prison, he sets about ruining or killing them... and if you're thinking this sounds like a western version of "The Count of Monte Cristo," well, I thought so too. And, as that's my second-favorite book of all time, I very much enjoyed that similarity! But unlike Edmund Dantes, Harry Destry has one worth opponent who nearly bests him.

Also unlike Edmund Dantes in Monte Cristo, Harry Destry discovers the emptiness of revenge before he loses the woman he loves or the boy who has helped him survive the frightened wrath of those he's hunting. The ending of this book was so full of shiny awesome that I know I'll be re-reading this book again and again in the coming years.

But if you think this book is going to be a lot like the Jimmy Stewart movie by the same title, sorry, it really isn't.

[Kurt Dinan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, if dated, read

I enjoyed this western a good bit. It was written a hundred years ago and it shows both style-wise and in regards to stereotypes and racial attitudes. Still, the story is fun and the plot always moving and interesting.

[Chris Keating · Rating 3 out of 5]

#6 Ben and I have been doing a podcast #popstorianpodcast so I figured I would read the book that our next episode is based on. It is a fast paced shoot em up. And it would make a great movie!

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very hard to review this.

First of all, the story takes place around the turn of the century (very late 1800s or very early 1900s), and the novel was published in the 1930s. So while some of the writing here might seem dated, once could argue for authenticity, given the fact that only three decades separate the two (while we are reading this almost a century later).

Secondly, the character of Destry. He isn't the most likeable, to be honest, especially in the early stages of the novel. Now, there is good reason for this, which becomes clear in the latter stages of the book, but you really need to finish the book to fully appreciate this. Here is an example: Destry is sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit, but as reader you hardly care about this, since he makes such a spectacle of the court proceedings that it is small wonder.

The novel also draws some parallels with The Count of Monte Cristo .

Now, what makes it such a good book? This is a genre classic and has been the basis for a couple of films and a TV series. The author looks at the nature of "the letter of the law", which speaks directly to the pivotal incidence mentioned above, and the way that it affects the rest of the plot. Guilt vs Innocence. Law vs Justice. These are themes that would inform Western fiction big time. Interestingly enough, Brand uses the jury system here to drive his point home (as opposed to the lynch mob), which could be a reflection on the exact time period the events take place (it is never clearly established). Also, there is a lot of character growth. Destry has been wronged, but he isn't truly innocent, and he realises this as the novel progresses towards its conclusion. This makes for some good inner conflict, and is also an early example of the "grey" character.

My rating kept fluctuating while I was reading this, but taking everything into account.... 5 stars

[David Welch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solidly written and entertaining western which is what you can usually expect from Max Band. The man (real name Frederick Schiller Faust) was not just prolific but amazingly consistent in his craftsmanship. This book centers around a character named Destry, known for being magnificent with his fists and his gun. He gets sent away for a crime he didn't commit and comes back looking for revenge on the jury. That makes it a bit interesting to read as even though you're rooting for Destry and being so wronged, the idea of going after a legal jury for exercising their judgment does still up some moral uncertainty about the whole thing. Destry himself has to face this before the end of the book. And while there is plenty of western gunplay, Destry doesn't just go on a revenge rampage with lead and fire. He tries numerous methods to take revenge without killing, with various levels of success. Add in a few betrayals and you hvae a fun, well-written western.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, Destry is a good man but has one big flaw, he has to be the best at everything: best fighter, best horseman, best shot with a gun. In my experience most boys out grow this behavior in Junior High School, only Destry never matured in this way. Growing up in town this made him few friends and many enemies. One person in particular has it out for him in part because Destry managed to catch the heart of the most beautiful woman in the county. This person is successful in sending Destry to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Destry gets out early due to good behavior but he is somewhat changed, but not completely, and he goes after the jury that sent him away. While trying to get revenge, Destry starts to change and through the hardships endured finally matures. In the end Destry becomes content with who he is and settles down.

[Tim Healy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided, on getting a cheap offer on this book, to give Max Brand a try. I've had mixed results with older books that I've picked up. Some are awesome. Some feel quite dated. This is more in the second camp. There's nothing wrong with the story and it actually moves along pretty well. I found, however, from the point-of-view of someone who has some experience with Westerns, this was pretty predictable. I knew where the plot was going long before it got there. Still, there were some nice twists on the way. The kid is also a bit "vapory" at the end. I'm not a fan of the whole, "he was so sick that he would pass out" kind of thing. In this book, he can't see, apparently because he's exhausted and not feeling well. OK, fine. I get that that's an older tradition. It just didn't much work for me. And much of the rest of the story really was fine.

[John Peel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harry Destry is a braggart and a bully who enjoys beating people who aren't as good as him with their fists. He is accused of a theft he didn't commit, and the jury is made up of men he's beaten up, so they have no problem with finding him guilty and sentencing him to ten years in jail. He vows revenge on them all, so when he's let out after six years, the twelve men decide that they'd better strike first. But Destry has learned a few new tricks in jail...

This is a fast-paced action Western novel with lots of well-crafted characters. It was written in 1930, so there's a fair amount of unconscious racism at some points. On the whole, though, this is an excellent tale of injustice and revenge. Go along for the ride, and you won't regret it.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best pulp Westerns I have read. Probably the best Max Brand I have read so far (though I missed the supernatural elements that I found in his 'Dan Barry' stories). Destry is quite a peculiar character, and the villain of the piece, Chester Bent, is quite an unusual villain. The only thing that marred this novel for me was the racist language employed by the father of the woman who is in love with Destry. It might be argued that use of racial slurs in fiction set in the late 19th Century is just an example of realism, and to expect anything different is naivety. Yes, I accept that, but I wince when I encounter such language anyway. Nonetheless this is a Western worth reading. Max Brand was a better writer than most of his pulp contemporaries.

[Allyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for the same reason almost anyone nowadays would read it - they love the Marlene Dietrich/Jimmy Stewart movie based upon it. I haven't seen the movie in decades and what little I remember seems to have very little in common with the book. Nevertheless, the book was enjoyable, even though Western is not a genre I ever read, and overlooking the unfortunate and anachronistic racial epithets. The writing was good, the descriptions of riding and the elements visceral, making you almost feel the horse under your butt. The language and dialect are fun and sound realistic without being too corny. Can't say that I'm excited to read others by this author, but I have satisfied my curiosity about the source of the movie.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language is rough in comparison to today’s society, but politically correct for the time period it was written. Language aside, reading this one makes me wish today’s “modern” western writers wrote in this kind of style. You have your classic lone good guy going up against a bad character, there’s a beautiful girl, several shootouts after the good guy was wronged, and things wind up neatly. I haven’t read a Max Brand western in over 30 years, and picked this one up for just 99 cents and received a heck of a lot more than that in entertainment value. If you like traditional, classic westerns, I would recommend this one.

[Janet Denise Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

ACTION, CHARACTER DRIVEN, GUNS

5 STARS for one of Max Brand's famous & well known characters that this reader picked up on by the end of the 1st chapter. The in-depth thought processes of the different men & lady were amazing to the storyline as it rambled fast paced and excitement packed with the men and around them. Of course the details of the natural surroundings they lived & worked were weaved around them in such a way that made nature itself almost an accessory of clothing or gave everything a sensational look of living in live painting s. Not to be missed. A genuine Classic by one of the greatest western writers of his (our) time!

[Brendan Cane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fairly generic and easy to digest tale. Following many western tropes, It does not seem like anything special until you realize that it was written in 1930, long before the golden era of on-screen cowboys in the 1950s and 60s, the era I think of when I hear the term "western." Now, I haven't read a ton of western books (Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men being the closest I've came so far), not old timey ones at least, but the quick drawing gun slingers, the train robberies, the cattle barons, horse chases, whiskey swilling, saloon rumbles, the damsel on the ranch... they're all here to make a comforting little story that was a perfect introductory to the genre for me.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Betrayal, Vengeance, and Redemption

First of all this is NOT the movie with James Stewart and Marlena Dietrich. Once I got over it, I really enjoyed the story. I wasn’t sure I would like Destry but he won me over. Yes it is a western, yes there is shoot ‘em up and horses, but it’s also a story about the growth of a human being due to love, kindness and truth. A worthwhile read.

[E. Franmklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deceit and Action Galore

So many twists and turns. Hang on for a rough ride. The writing style takes away from the excellence of the story. The author spends too many words setting the scene and over-explaining details. Otherwise a great action packed tale of deceitful liars and killers. Destroy did ride again, handled his ambivalent feelings,and rode off into a new more peaceful history.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!

Started out a little slow but quickly got me hooked. The characters are fleshed out pretty well and the dialogue is great. The story is really well done, right up to the end. This is the first Max Brand book I’ve read but I’ve seen movies based on other books he’s written that I liked so I decided to give this one a try. I don’t think this will be the last of his books I’ll read.

[Jay Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a bad story. Destry is a troublemaker. He gets in fights just to prove how tough he is. He made a good deal of enemies along the way. Then he Is framed for a robbery he did not commit. There ris little proof but the jury of twelve men all have reason to find him guilty. He goes away for six years and is bent on revenge. This is an older book and is marked by frequent use of the “n” word.