With a brand-new license for More or Less Investigations, Skip Moore and his pal James are in the PI business. However, James is pulling Skip into his latest get-rich- quick deal: working as a carnie for the Moe Show.

Skip has a low opinion of people who work in carnivals, and after their last adventure almost got them killed and destroyed their truck, he isn't really excited about being thrust into another world filled with suspicious characters and the shady underworld. However, despite his misgivings, when Moe expresses interest in them for their PI abilities to discover the origin of accidents and deaths at the carnival, Skip becomes more willing to work at the carnival...and it all goes downhill from there. Being a PI isn't just about asking question and hoping close-knit carnival workers will present a neatly wrapped confession and motive: Skip may try to hide from trouble, but it always seeks James out with a vengeance, so Skip never gets to avoid dangerous repercussions.

In this, as well as the other Stuff novels, the patter is snappy, the action is fast, and the characters are so believable that a reader would recognize Skip and James if he or she met them on the street, at an evangelist's tent, or at a carnival. How a book can be so madcap and yet so believable is part of Bruns' art.