The Cardiff Giant Affair is set in 1869 Syracuse and features a happy mélange of medicine shows, con games, "brawling canawlers", high society, and murder, with two highly spirited women and incidental glimpses of P. T. Barnum. All this is interwoven with the splendid true story of the Cardiff Giant hoax. The two plots, fictional and real, illuminate each other and the author's thesis that "folks jest naturally crave to be gulled".

First came the discovery of a petrified, life-like giant, complete with skin pores and reproductive anatomy, buried on a farm in nearby Cardiff, New York. Lossie, always fascinated by the new and out-of-the-ordinary, persuaded Orrin to drive her there in his family carriage the very day the giant was uncovered.

The second event was the arrival of Orrin and Lossie’s new neighbor, the mysterious and glamorous Madam Cissy Janeway, who moved in directly across the street. Almost at once, they began to notice strange comings and goings around Madam Janeway’s house at night. As for Madam Janeway, she quickly became the subject of gossip around town. She seemed to have admission to the highest levels of society -yet it was whispered she was a “protégée” of multimillionaire Wall St. financier Daniel Drew. She lived the life of a woman of utmost refinement and unlimited means, yet to Orrin and Lossie’s consternation her butler looked and talked like a stevedore and treated her like his servant.

Third was the murdered man whose body Orrin discovered in the family stable by their carriage. The man had been strangled by someone very strong, and no one in Syracuse would admit to ever having seen him before. As the discoverer of the body, Orrin became the chief suspect and he and Lossie knew they would have to get to the bottom of it all to clear his name.

Orrin knew there was a meaningful connection between all the three events - but what was it?