THE COLLECTED WORKS OF MAX BRAND includes 28 western novels and short stories by prolific writer Frederick Schiller Faust, better known by his pseudonym, Max Brand. This collection includes many of Brand's classic westerns including THE UNTAMED, THE NIGHT HORSEMAN, RIDERS OF THE SILENCES, CROSSROADS, and GUNMAN'S RECKONING. • Above the Law • Harrigan • John Ovington Returns • Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett • Riders of the Silences • Trailin’! • The Ghost • Crossroads • The Man Who Forgot Christmas • Black Jack • Bull Hunter • Gunman’s Reckoning • The Long, Long Trail • Way of the Lawless • Jerico’s Garrison Finish • The Cure of Silver Canyon • Alcatraz • The Garden of Eden • The Rangeland Avenger • Wild Freedom • The Cross Brand • The Power of Prayer Dan Barry Stories • The Untamed • The Night Horseman • The Seventh Man Ronicky Doone Stories • Ronicky Doone • Ronicky Doone’s Treasure • Ronicky Doone’s Reward Max Brand was a pen name of American writer Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944), who also wrote under the pseudonmyns George Owen Baxter, Evan Evans, George Evans, David Manning, John Frederick, Peter Morland, George Challis, and Frederick Frost. Faust began his career by selling western stories to the pulps of the 1910s, and became primarily known as a contributor to the various popular western pulp magazines of that time. In the 1930s, Brand created the popular Dr. Kildare character and became a successful screenwriter. Dr. Kildare was adapted to motion pictures, radio, television, and comic books. During his long career, Faust wrote more than 500 novels and novellas, and almost as many short stories, with his total literary output approaching thirty million words. He was killed in Italy serving as a war correspondent during the second World War. This expanded Fifth Edition includes additional novels as well as corrections and updates.
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.
Undoubtedly the thing about this book that makes the strongest impression is its incredible variety. The settings of these stories vary from the slums of New York to Golden Age Hollywood, the trenches of WWI to the rural San Joaquin valley, the Southwestern desert to villas in the south of France—the characters range from a young farmhand to a big-city mob boss to an impoverished Russian Count. Max Brand seems equally at home with all of them. All of the stories definitely bear the mark of the same writer, but there are surprises, especially if you mainly know Brand from his Western work. I was amazed, for instance, that the warmth and sweetness of "Our Daily Bread," a short, touching story of a Jewish storekeeper's family, could have come from the same man who penned the savagery of the revenge Western "Outcast Breed."
With such variety it's almost impossible to review or describe the collection as a whole. My top favorites are "Our Daily Bread," "The Sun Stood Still," "Honor Bright," "The Silent Witness" and "Miniature." And the chilling "Wine on the Desert," one of Brand's most famous Westerns—well, it's hard to say that you like a story like this, but you have to admire the craft.
Also good are "Internes Can't Take Money" (the first Dr. Kildare story), "Pringle's Luck," "The King" and "Virginia Creeper." "Fixed" is pretty good. The spy story "The Strange Villa" and the swashbuckling Italian Renaissance-era adventure story "The Claws of the Tigress" are excerpts from longer works—I remember reading a longer version of the latter in a different collection and enjoying it very much, but the excerpt here is just a brief taste.
At the bottom of the list for me are the pair of "literary" stories, "The Wedding Guest" and "A Special Occasion." Literary short stories are just not my type—they generally feel like perpetually unsolved riddles, and depressing ones at that, however well-written. Just above these would go the opening entries, "John Ovington Returns" and "Above the Law," slightly fantastical tales which show the marks of being early works, but give a glimpse of the style that Brand would develop.
(Missing from this collection are two of my very favorite Brand stories, "A Watch and the Wilderness" and "The Kinsale." If you were to combine these two with the pick of the stories I mentioned above, that would definitely be a volume I'd have on my library shelf.)