Captain Clive's Dreamworld

by Jon Bassoff

Overview

​​"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

​​After becoming the suspect in the death of a young woman, Deputy Sam Hardy is reassigned to the town of Angels and Hope, which, within its borders, holds the once magnificent amusement park, 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 town, and he finds himself becoming more and more isolated. The truth-about the town and himself-will lead him to understand that there's no such thing as a clean escape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621053132
Publisher:	Eraserhead Press
Publication date:	10/01/2020
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Jon Bassoff was born in 1974 in New York City and currently lives with his family in a ghost town somewhere in Colorado. His mountain gothic novel, Corrosion, has been translated in French and German and was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France's biggest crime fiction award. Two of his novels, The Drive-Thru Crematorium and The Disassembled Man, have been adapted for the big screen with Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild; Once Upon a Time in America) attached to star in The Disassembled Man. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English where he is known by students and faculty alike as the deranged writer guy. He is a connoisseur of tequila, hot sauces, psychobilly music, and flea-bag motels.

Editorial Reviews

"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

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​​"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

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​​"Jon Bassoff mines an imaginative seam that remains unexplored by any other writer I know working today. I wish I knew his secret, but I'll settle for reading Captain Clive's Dreamworld."

​​-Tony Black, author of Summoning the Dead

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​​"Captain Clive's Dreamworld is a masterfully rendered, very disturbing cautionary tale of pathological consumerism and nostalgia for a mid-century 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

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​​"In Captain Clive's Dreamworld, Jon Bassoff has created a haunting, suspenseful masterpiece that straddles the line between mystery and horror with expert skill."

-​​S.A. Cosby, award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland

From the Publisher