Combining elements from dime-store novels and Packard’s own experience on the rails, The Wire Devils is at once a hybrid western and a thriller still worth reading nearly a century after it was written.
Frank L. Packard (1877–1942) was a widely published Canadian writer of crime fiction. He was the author of nearly thirty books published from 1914 to 1938. Robert MacDougall is associate professor of history at the University of Western Ontario.