Stanton Carlisle, an ambitious carny on the make, learns a few techniques for “cold reading” or “mitt reading” rubes and telling them what they want to hear. Armed with a philosophy consisting of “One in five is a born chump” (page #19) and “Misdirection is the whole works, honey” (page 35), our hero spruces himself up and develops his spiel. He declares himself a Reverend and impresses the credulous by donning a clerical collar.

The crooked Reverend gets hold of an old house, which he calls “the Church” of his controversial religion. “With this house I can gimmick it up from cellar to attic,” (page 136) he crows, going into the spook racket with a vengeance. In the early days of the Church, the Reverend makes a living charging for nightly lectures on esoteric topics and teaching “development classes” to his disciples. Topics for these lectures are cribbed from obscure books with which he assumes his audience will not be familiar.

He develops a polished, cultured manner of public speaking for his clerical activities, while privately retaining the vulgar, tough-guy lingo of his carnival days. This double life begins to create psychic strain, and he becomes paranoid, fretting that “there could be a cabal forming against him in the Church.” (page 154) He tires of small fry and seeks the company of “well-heeled” clientele.

His mistrust of everyone ferments into a pathological misogyny, and he takes out his fears and insecurities on the “dames” in his life, mistreating and eventually pimping them. This does not prevent him from blaming all of his self-created misfortunes on what he sees as female deviousness and treachery.

Eventually this hard-eyed cynic, who likes to think he’s a few steps ahead of the world he despises, ends up as an impoverished freak. Far from achieving the “big time” success he longs for, he spends his last days as a forgotten laughing stock.