|
I have just read "Destry Rides Again", by Max Brand.
It was completely not what I expected. I had seen the James Stewart/Marlene Dietrich movie years ago, probably on late night TV, also the Audie Murphy remake. There was little left of the novel except the name.
I don't normally read westerns, at least not since my teens, but this one is a legend, like "Shane", so I gave it a shot.
Destry is a rather a rough young man, practically a juvenile delinquent, fast with his fists and gun; unpopular, he is framed for a robbery and twelve "good men and true" find him guilty. Six years later, out of jail, he comes back to town to track down the real robber, and to deal with the 12 men who found him guilty.
Destry uses guile, cunning, and some help, to sort it out, while avoiding very determined efforts on the part of the baddies to beat him to the punch.
A plot much like The Count of Monte Christo, and numerous other novels. And Destry finds out several things about himself that he didn't know, and finishes up a lot less cock-sure than he started out. The final action appears to take place around 1900-1905, from some internal evidence.
Max Brand was the author of many westerns, and also the Doctor Kildare series of novels.
He died in 1944, 72 years ago. So, unless my count-on-my fingers arithmetic is shaky, his works are now in the public domain in the USA, and other life+70 countries. There are a few of his books on Project Gutenberg, and rather more on Gutenberg Australia, because of the vagaries of Australian copyright law which saw Max Brand's books enter the Australian public domain in 1995.
|