‘The Brand of Vindex’

From the pages of Detective Fiction Weekly in the mid-1930s, The Brand of Vindex, from Steeger Books, as part of its Argosy Library, collects the three-part series of Captain Vindex by Tracy French.

These appeared over a year in 1934-35. I have no idea who Tracy French was as he doesn’t appear to have written anything else. Is this a pseudonym for someone? I have no idea.

I think this series may have been inspired in part by the then-recent Lindbergh Baby case.

In this series, Captain Vindex and his selected associates go up against The Parson, a super-criminal and master of disguise who heads a criminal enterprise built around kidnapping and extortion. As the mission of Vindex is only to stop The Parson, once completed, there is no reason for him to keep operating.

After reading the series, I think it’s inspired by the “limited vengeance” heroes of Johnston McCulley, though here both the villains and the heroes are quite willing to kill.

We meet the captain and his associates in the first story. They have all been the victims of kidnappings going bad, all involving their children. Captain Vindex was a former stage actor. He is joined by a former cop, lawyer, doctor, and business man. Also joining them is Vindex’s valet, Kato, who had cared for Vindex’s children.

The name “Vindex” means vengeance or avenger. The captain also carries a small branding iron with a “V,” which he brands on the foreheads of the criminals he and his associates kill. This goes beyond The Spider‘s stamp and is more like the later Lobster.

In that first adventure, we discover that one of the men Vindex brings in is actually a spy from The Parson. He is exposed and dies, but they get enough information to work to save the life of a little girl who has been kidnapped by The Parson, though Vindex almost dies in his hands. The book cover is based on a scene from this one as he goes undercover in The Parson’s gang.

In the next adventure, they work to save the life of a young wife, who is kidnapped because it’s thought her husband is rich, but is not. Can Vindex and his associates find her before she is killed? We see how sinister The Parson is, as he casually has one of his underlings to kill a young accomplice.

In the final adventure, The Parson creates a new extortion racket, kidnapping rich men to extort protection money. Vindex again goes into the mouth of the lion in disguise to expose The Parson. Will he and his associates succeed and put an end to The Parson?

This is an action-packed series of stories with action, suspense, and more. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get more adventures with this character. As noted, it struck me as someone taking some of the kinds of characters Johnson McCulley used to do in the early pulps, but adding in stuff like violence and the like that we see in the later pulps. This is certainly one to check out.