Bobby Clark, the hero of Clancy Martin’s “How to Sell” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24), is a born thief. And not at all ashamed of it. Or, perhaps, aware of it. He introduces himself with the charming story of stealing his mother’s wedding ring; his lingering regret is that the pawnshop ripped him off. He’s a bit of a sociopath, our Bobby, part of a great literary tradition that includes Duddy Kravitz and Studs Lonigan, characters who are hard to like, and equally hard to hate, largely because they’re such good salesmen. Which is something that the author knows all about.

Bobby is car-crash fascinating. But what really sucks the reader into the clockworks of Martin’s uneven, unreliable but very readable debut novel is the author’s background in high-end jewelry. While his bio also describes Martin as a “con man turned philosophy professor” (which should bring a wry smile to the lips of undergraduates everywhere), it’s his expertise in selling jewelry, especially watches, that allows the character of Bobby to come into his own.

At Forth Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange, where his equally conscienceless brother Jim has brought him aboard, Bobby isn’t even a salesman yet, but he instinctively approaches a wealthy Texan the way a hyena would approach a bleeding wildebeest. He makes the sale. And he maintains his blinkered point of view. “You spend the rest of your career trying to recapture that innocence,” he says of himself, straight-faced.

Martin’s story might be called coming-of-age, although Bobby doesn’t seem transformed by the sales, drugs, drink and sex — or by the barely legal antics perpetrated against customers with too much money. Martin creates a voracious cast of retail animals, the women being the most interesting, if almost uniformly mendacious. Bobby’s wife is a shrew, his girlfriend — who’s also Jim’s girlfriend — becomes a prostitute and the older women who populate the Fort Worth jewelry trade are harlots, harpies and harridans.

Don’t blame Martin for this misogynistic worldview. Blame Bobby. Martin merely provides a grimy window onto a man who knows he’s a Timex in a world run by Patek Philippes.