LEGEND 4: The Man Who Shot Garfield Delany by I.J. Parnham

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You can always count on Ian Parnham to leave you smiling. He delivers again in “The Man Who Shot Garfield Delany”, his entry in the Express Westerns anthology A Fistful of Legends.

The story begins with a gunfight:

“Go for you gun when you’re ready to die,” Frank Beckett said.

Garfield Delany gulped, his cocky attitude fading away faster than the dying rays of the sun at his back. “You won’t get to ride out of Liberty, Marshal,” he said, the tremor in is voice betraying his nervousness. “I’ve killed eleven men and I’m looking forward to making that a dozen.”

Our appetite’s been whetted for blood and sudden death. But as usual in Parnham’s West, no one is as good (or as bad) as they seem. In this case, the shootout is an act in a Wild West show, an “authentic account” of an event that took place twenty years earlier. But is it really authentic? Ex-Marshal Frank Beckett can’t quite remember.

So when Frank’s boss decides to make the gunfight more and more exciting - to the point that Frank faces a gang of ten desperadoes, saves the town from being blown up and rescues Bat Masterson’s sister - Frank plays along. And it works just fine, until Frank meets the one man who really knows what happened twenty years ago. That man has a score to settle, and is determined to settle it with a gun.

What happens next? Read it and see! A Fistful of Legends is available from Amazon and a bunch of other online booksellers. And if you happen to be in the UK, you can pick one up at your neighborhood Tesco supermarket.

Want more on Black Horse and Avalon Western author I.J. Parnham? Visit his blog The Culbin Trail and check out the Almanack's reviews of his books.

More Legends:.
Legend 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford
Legend 2: Billy by Lance Howard (Howard Hopkins)
Legend 3: Lonigan Must Die! by Ben Bridges (David Whitehead)
Legend 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)

The Finest Frontier Town in the West by I.J. Parnham

Last month I read (and reviewed) the first in I.J. Parnham’s Fergal & Randolph series, The Legend of Shamus McGinty’s Gold, and wondered how he was going to improve upon it. Well, now I know. He made the second book even funnier. This time around, the dumb guys are dumber, the greedy guys greedier, the high stakes higher, and the dire conse- quences more dire.

The closest thing to an honest character in this book is the hired gunslinger who’s after Fergal and Randolph’s hides. Evil as he is, he stays true to his word. But as far as the rest of the cast goes (and that’s covering a lot of characters), all bets are off.

It’s a contest, you see. A $10,000 prize will go the community a panel of judges deem “The Finest Frontier Town in the West.”  The competition has narrowed to two contenders, and both towns are cheerfully pursuing their own crooked agendas when Fergal and Randolph happen along and turn the situation on its head.

Complications multiply as Fergal attempts to hoodwink two towns full of rascals, plus the panel of rascally judges. The tale clips nicely along from one outrageous surprise to the next until Fergal and Randolph are masters of their own fates – they can choose whether to be shot down by a merciless gunfighter or face the loaded weapons of an enraged mob.

I finished this book a week ago and it’s still vivid in my mind. But most vivid of all is a character we never actually meet. His presence looms over landscape, the very personification of Ian Parnham’s American frontier - though he never appears on stage.  Read The Finest Frontier Town in the West (Avalon Books, 2003) and you’ll see what I mean. Try as you might, you’ll never forget the man known as… Warty Bill.

Coming soon: Book 3 - Miss Dempsey's School for Gunfighters

The Legend of Shamus McGinty's Gold

Since reading I.J. Parnham's revelation that the characters in his Fergal O'Brien/Randolph McDougal series were loosely inspired by Blackadder and his toady Baldric, I've been eager to get my hands on one of the books. So I did - the first in the series from 2002. Fergal, as you may know, is a traveling snake-oil salesman and Randolph is his long-suffering bodyguard. As Ian says, they're not Blackadder and Baldric, but rather the two characters turned upside down. Whatever they are, they both mesh and clash to produce a compelling and humorous relationship. Holmes and Watson. Archie and Nero Wolfe. Jeeves and Wooster.

It's not easy to find a series with the blend of action and humor I like, so it's great to find one that not only meets the bill, but is already well along (5 books so far). This means I can jump right into the next adventure without waiting. Ian displays the comic wit and careful pacing necessary to move seamlessly from clever repartee to blazing gunfire and back. The story is packed with wonderfully larcenous characters and unexpected twists - coming to a climax that leaves you eager to see the next book. A cunning plan, indeed.