The Missing Link

Nickie the Kid is the kind of man who could sell ice to an eskimo, provided the eskimo was drunk enough and Nickie was desperate enough for a meal. In Edward Dyson's rollicking 1922 Australian novella, our hero is a small-time con artist plying the streets with bottles of dubious 'healing mixtures' and charmed by any woman foolish enough to offer him a warm bed. He's not a villain, exactly, just a resourceful rogue who'd rather talk his way through life than work for it. The trouble starts when Nickie's schemes run dry and he stumbles into employment at a traveling show, where he finds himself donning a gorilla suit and pretending to be the Missing Link. The disguise is absurd, the show is dubious, and Nickie plays the part with the same brass nerve he brings to everything. But when his past catches up with him mid-performance, the comedy escalates into something genuinely delightful. Dyson writes with the quick, punchy rhythm of vaudeville, capturing the rough humor and stubborn optimism of working-class Australia. This is a novella about the oldest trick in the book: reinventing yourself to survive, and discovering that the performance might say more about the audience than the performer.