Captain Clives Dreamworld, Jon Bassoff
Captain Clives Dreamworld, Jon Bassoff
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Captain Clive's Dreamworld

Author: Jon Bassoff

Narrator: Richard Smalls

Unabridged: 7 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2020

Categories: Fiction, Fantasy, Noir


Synopsis

After becoming the suspect in the murder of a young prostitute, Deputy Sam Hardy is “vanished” to a temporary post as the sole police officer in Angels and Hope, an idyllic town located in the middle of the desert, miles from any other sign of life. Hardy soon learns that Angels and Hope was constructed as a company town to support a magnificent amusement park—one to rival Disneyland—known as Captain Clive’s Dreamworld. When he arrives, however, Hardy notices some strange happenings. The park is essentially empty of customers. None of the townsfolk ever seem to sleep. And girls seem to be going missing with no plausible explanation.As Hardy begins investigating, his own past is drawn into question by the people in town, and he finds himself becoming more and more isolated. Soon his phone line mysteriously goes dead. His car’s tires get slashed. And he is being watched constantly by neighbors. The truth—about the town and himself—will lead him to understand that there’s no such thing as a clean escape.Straddling the line between genre fiction and something more bizarre, Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is a terrifying vision of the collapse of the American mythos.

About Jon Bassoff

Jon Bassoff is the author of ten novels, several of which have been translated into French and German. His mountain-gothic novel, Corrosion, was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France’s biggest crime fiction award, and his debut novel, The Disassembled Man, was recently adapted for the big screen. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English in Longmont, Colorado. He is a connoisseur of tequila, hot sauces, psychobilly music, and fleabag motels.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sadie on October 27, 2020

Original Review published at Cemetery Dance: [URL not allowed] For anyone that’s ever lived in a small town where everyone knows each other and seems to hold secrets about their next-door neighbors, idyllic town horror is a satisfying trope. Truth is always stranger than fiction......more

Goodreads review by J.A. on February 19, 2021

David Lynch has been quoted as saying: “I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.” I tend to think Lynch is right but would add a c......more

Goodreads review by Chandra on September 17, 2020

"Orwell, the guy who wrote 1984, feared the leaders would conceal the truth from us. Huxley worries that they wouldn't need to because the truth would no longer matter to us. Which is worse, Deputy?" Well this was definitely quite the interesting read. I always have loved stories where a small, seemi......more

Goodreads review by Horror on October 01, 2020

I have been a fan of Jon Bassoff for several years and in the world of weird fiction he is a shining light I am always happy to check out. Since his debut in 2013 he has released a novel most years, with his interpretation of ‘weird’ injecting horror, thrillers, surrealism, crime, bizarro and regula......more

Goodreads review by Yvonne (thehorrorhive) on January 23, 2022

Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is bizarro horror at its most imaginative. Imagine Disneyworld on crack and you’ll be getting close to what Dreamworld and the town of Angels and Hope offers. It gives off that small-town mentality – that everyone knows you and your business. As an incomer to places like t......more


Quotes

Captain Clive’s Dreamworld winds its way through an eerie, Lynchian landscape, populated by Stepford citizenry, cursed lives, and all the bleak sensibilities of the most dire Cormac McCarthy tale. Bassoff’s latest is a must-read for fans of the genre, or any reader who prefers their fiction with a sense of the off-kilter. Highly recommended!” Ronald Malfi, author of Bone White

“Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is a masterfully rendered, very disturbing cautionary tale of pathological consumerism and nostalgia for a midcentury America that never was. Jon Bassoff’s vision is relentless and unsparing, his prose like a bone saw laying bare the corruption and perversion lurking beneath society’s superficial pieties.” Roger Smith, author of Dust Devils

“Jon Bassoff’s nightmarish bizarro novel Captain Clive’s Dreamworld reads like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone mixed with Twin Peaks mixed with Dante’s Inferno. Unremittingly dark, this roman noir is a trenchant attack on the empty promises of capitalism…a hopeless rebuke of the bright plastic flesh built around the broken, crumbling skeleton of the American Dream.” Jeffrey Thomas, author of Boneland