Nightmare alley - William Lindsay Gresham

One of the twentieth century's most darkly beautiful works of crime fiction-a story of carny life, spiritualism, and a con man of merciless resolve.

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek-alcoholic
and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd's gleeful disgust and derision-going
about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he
wonders how a man could fall so low. There's no way in hell, he vows, that anything
like that will ever happen to him.

And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not
without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he's going places. Onstage he
plays the mentalist with a cute bimbo (before long his harried wife), then he graduates
to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their
well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan's for the taking. At least
for now.