Interesting premise. Having just recently gone to the Ringling Bros show when it came through Salt Lake City, I found the behind-the-scenes circus stuff especially interesting. I also learned a little something about a side effect of Prohibition I hadn't known about before (jake leg, which apparently afflicted more than 100,000 Americans between 1930 and 1931, according to the author's note at the end of the book). I'm not a fan of novels written in the present tense, but the plot and characters were compelling enough to keep me reading and even got me to forget about the present tense for pages at a time. Fun, quick read.