Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

<p><b>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.<br></b><i><br>Nightmare Alley </i>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.</p><p>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.</p>