Destry Rides Again is the story of Harrison Destry’s quest for revenge against the 12 jurors whose personal malice leads them to wrongfully convict him of robbery. When he gets out on good behavior, he plans his revenge. He does not murder any of them, though he kills some in self-defense. Instead, he systematically sets about ruining each of the jurors’ lives.

As one of Max Brand’s most famous works, it remained in print 70 years after its first publication. Destry Rides Again was first published in 1930, in a series of installments under the title “Twelve Peers” in Western Story Magazine. It was republished as a paperback later that year under the title Destry Rides Again. The word “again” in the title refers to Destry’s renewed freedom to ride after being let out of prison, not to any previous story; this novel was the Destry character’s fiction debut. This title was later made into 3 films starring Tom Mix and Jimmy Stewart, a Broadway musical and a TV series.

Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand. Faust’s other pseudonyms include Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C Butler, George Challis, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, and Peter Ward. Faust (as Max Brand) also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern Dr. James Kildare in a series of pulp-fiction stories which later became a popular TV series. Wanting to write a good war novel, Faust in late 1944 got an assignment with Harper’s Magazine as a war correspondent. While in Italy traveling with American soldiers, he was mortally wounded by shrapnel.

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