Incident at Pegasus Heights

By I.J. Parnham

Crowood Press, March 2017

When fossil-hunter Jim Dragon is on this way to Bear Creek to sell his latest discovery, he goes to the aid of a woman in distress, Elmina Fay. Unfortunately, Pierre Dulaine takes advantage of the situation and steals his fossils.

Jim vows to reclaim his property and Elmina offers to help him, but only if he’ll do something for her. She has heard a tale about the bones of a winged horse being found nearby and she wants Jim to find Pegasus for her.

At first, Jim is sceptical about embarking on such a mission, but before long he discovers that the truth behind the tale is even stranger than he could ever have imagined.

Ian Parnham has created a great set of characters for this story, people who all seem to have secrets, and these along with the mystery of the flying horse make this a hard-to-put-down read.

Even though no-one really seems to know what it is they are trying to find, all sides are determined to discover it first and will do anything to make sure it’s them. As all converge on an outcrop on which sits a wagon which defies all logic as to how it got there – unless a flying horse truly deposited it there – the author has great fun with explanations both true and false and includes plenty of fist fights, before everyone gets involved in a deadly gunfight that will eventually reveal the answers to all the puzzles.

So, once again for me, this author has come up with a very entertaining read that left me hoping one or two of the surviving characters may return another day. In the meantime I’m left looking forward to Ian Parnham’s next book.