The Black Rider (29 page)

M
ax Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.

Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquín Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles.

Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in
The Max Brand Companion
(Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.

Other
Leisure
books by Max Brand ®:

THE CITY IN THE SKY
CROSSROADS
LUCK
RED ROCK’S SECRET
DOGS OF THE CAPTAIN
THE LAWLESS WEST
   (Anthology)
THE FUGITIVE
TWISTED BARS
TROUBLE’S MESSENGER
BAD MAN’S GULCH
THE RANGE FINDER
MOUNTAIN STORMS
THE GOLDEN CAT
PETER BLUE
MORE TALES OF THE WILD
   WEST
FLAMING FORTUNE
THE RUNAWAYS
BLUE KINGDOM
JOKERS EXTRA WILD
CRUSADER
SMOKING GUNS
THE LONE RIDER
THE UNTAMED WEST
   (Anthology)
THE TYRANT
THE WELDING QUIRT
THE BRIGHT FACE OF
   DANGER
DON DIABLO
THE OUTLAW REDEEMER
THE GOLD TRAIL
THE PERIL TREK
THE MASTERMAN
TIMBER LINE
THE OVERLAND KID
THE GOLDEN WEST
   (Anthology)
THE HOUSE OF GOLD
THE GERALDI TRAIL
GUNMAN’S GOAL
CHINOOK
IN THE HILLS OF
   MONTEREY
THE LOST VALLEY
THE FUGITIVE’S MISSION
THE SURVIVAL OF JUAN
   ORO
THE GAUNTLET
STOLEN GOLD
THE WOLF STRAIN
MEN BEYOND THE LAW
BEYOND THE OUTPOSTS
THE STONE THAT SHINES
THE OATH OF OFFICE
DUST ACROSS THE RANGE/
   THE CROSS BRAND
THE ROCK OF KIEVER
SOFT METAL
THUNDER MOON AND THE
   SKY PEOPLE
RED WIND AND THUNDER
   MOON
THE LEGEND OF THUNDER
   MOON
THE QUEST OF LEE
   GARRISON
SAFETY McTEE
TWO SIXES
SIXTEEN IN NOME

A LEISURE BOOK
^®

September 2008

Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 1996 by Jane Faust Easton and Adriana Faust Bianchi. Foreword and headnotes © 1996 by Jon Tuska.

The name Max Brand is trademarked by the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used without express written permission.

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E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0622-0

The name “Leisure Books” and the stylized “L” with design are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

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