The Whispering Outlaw

Being retired, I enjoy the time listening to books on CD. This was a good western book by Max Brand. Enjoy.

Leisure Books is cheating a little by publishing this edition of The Whispering Outlaw under the name Max Brand. Although it was written by Frederick Faust (the real name of the multi-pseudonymous author who created Destry and Doctor Kildare), Faust did not originally publish it under his Max Brand nom de plume, but under another alias entirely: George Owen Baxter, one of the five names under which he wrote. Nevertheless, this is merely nitpicking because The Whispering Outlaw retains the familiar Brand readability, and especially read-out-loud-ability, of his other works. The notorious Whisperer hires Lew Borgen to be his representative among his newest choice of outlaws to do his mysterious bidding. But the outlaws get suspicious (and a little greedy) when they realize that both the Whisperer's cut of their proceeds has to also go through Borgen. Meanwhile, Rose Kenworthy, the sheriff's beautiful daugher, is entranced by a curious loner she discovers while walking through the woods. Will her father allow her to marry such a man, or does it even matter? Brand is a master of the Western genre, and every detail rings true. His characters are realistic, and his events fully plausible and organic to their situations. The way he combines his multiple plotlines is nothing short of remarkable. The Whispering Outlaw is the third Brand book I've attempted (I was unable to get all the way through an audiobook of War Party that I felt was being read too slowly to match Brand's kinetic language), but it's the third of many to come. Brand / Faust wrote so many books that Leisure releases a different one nearly every month. Based on my limited experience, I will predict that a reader could not go wrong with any of them.