Customer Reviews

The Oath of Office

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Max Brand was one of those writers who was WAY too prolific for his own good-- He wrote SO MUCH that the quality of his work suffered greatly and often. A rule often applied by his biggest fans (I've met a few) is that his older work (from 1917 to about the mid 1920s) is usually the best. I have found this to generally hold true, as the thirties output, in particular, tends to be meandering and pointless at times. (Brand turned in the later years toward long series of novels such as the Silvertip series, and he really began to stretch these stories unmercifully.)

The stories collected in this volume are a marvelous exception. These stories, long known among Brand fans as the "Chip stories" were published in the pulps in the early thirties and are a rare glimpse of the western writer Frederick Faust COULD have been, if he had taken more care about it. These 3 stories HAVE all been published in paperback before (in spite of the claims of the front cover) but never in ONE volune. They are delightful first-person narratives about Chip, a 15 year old gunhand and his relationships to an outlaw, Dug Waters, a rancher, Newbold, and the narrator, Joe. They are that rarest of pulp joys-- Pure, unpretentious B-western adventures-- and they are very humorously written and well- crafted. If Brand had kept up this kind of groove, he'd have become a REAL legend among western writers and fans.

A must for all B-western fans and Brand afficionados.