exist Nightmare Alleyeach person is his or her own worst enemy. Cheats, cheats, and liars take advantage of the unwary, yes, but these cheaters have the same weaknesses as their targets; existential desires linger around them like the dark spots that appear in your eyes when you stare at the sun too long and disappear when you reach out for it.
Stanton Carlisle is our main con man, eking out a living with a gang of revelers. To call Stan an anti-hero is generous. He starts out as a card trickster, then a cold reader, a sun-haired kid who is ruthless and cunning, willing to use friends and lovers as props to get cash.
A dark pulp classic. Nightmare Alley Terrors are woven into the most intimate of places. Stan single-mindedly pursues money and status while escaping a childhood trauma; his naive girlfriend seeks a surrogate mother for her late gambler father; an alcoholic willing to bite the head off a chicken with his teeth in order to get that all-important bottle of booze; and ordinary people so desperate to commune with the dead that they will, against all logic and judgment, turn to con men like Stan for solace.
The author doesn’t need to tease us with bad guys with guns or psychopaths with butcher knives. Nightmare Alley It’s real, and if your heart trembles hard enough, you can imagine yourself being consumed by it.
Stanton Carlisle is hard to like, but his tenacity, wit, and ability to get out of tough situations make him fascinating while taking money out of his targets’ pockets. You won’t be surprised when he abandons his carnival techniques for a priest’s garb.
It was just another scam, another ruse, one that would have showcased Stan’s talent for cunning.
Don’t expect a happy ending here. This is no spoiler, because you’ll know that Stan is caught in a web of curse he has woven himself, barely realizing that he’s the fly squirming helplessly in the middle, caught in such blind delusion that he doesn’t realize when he’s become the victim of a more dangerous scam, or is aiming at the wrong target.
I discovered this book after browsing this underrated author’s blog William Lindsay Gresham should be a household name, especially among horror and suspense readers.
Rating: 5/5
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