Book Review: Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Low-level carnival worker Stan Carlisle does magic tricks and such but he has much higher ambitions. He's smart and wants to go to the big time. The fortune teller/psychic at the carnival, Zeena, has a lush of a husband named Pete who used to do a highly polished mentalist act with her. The pressure got to him. He turned to the bottle and is an alcoholic. Now he works behind the scenes, feeding Zeena bits of info from the crowd so she can show off her "psychic" powers. Stan is interested in the mentalist routine but can't quite turn Zeena on to it. He gets the code book from Zeena and the favor of Molly, a sweet girl working the electric chair exhibit in the carnival. Molly and Stan go off on their own to bilk bigger targets using the mentalist scam. Stan keeps talking about the one great mark who, when he pays off, will let them retire. They never seem to get that far, even though Stan opens up a fake church of spiritualism where he convinces people he can talk to the dead. He finds a female psychologist who might be able to hook him up with the great mark. But can he be trusted? Can she be trusted?

The novel came out in the 1940s and was made into a feature film with Tyrone Power in the lead role. The story follows very much the noir tradition. Stan is the sympathetic anti-hero. He's come out of hard circumstances with the result that he himself has become hard. Most everyone else, for him, is a "mark" or "chump," not a real person. Stan tries to work every angle. He is very smart. Even so, he can't see every angle and he lives in constant worry that things will turn against him. The novel is much darker than the movie (which is saying something) but follows the same general arc. Each chapter is headed with a Tarot card that is thematically relates to what happens in that part of the book. The novel is well crafted and keeps the reader engaged. It is not the happiest of trips.

Slightly recommended--this is pretty dark for noir literature but, like a traffic accident, it's hard to look away.