Dreamworld

MTV/Pocket, 2000. Very Good+. A crisp clean softcover, no markings throughout: The theme park called Dreamworld is a place where people feel safe--safe to bring their children, and safe to heal the damaged children that they them selves once were. Around her, the visitors who had hurried to get into the park earlier that day fell blithely under its spell. No need to hurry now, plenty of time, th ey joined the gently bobbing human tide...this dreamy, insistent current of tired, happy people. Security guard Avery has serious emotional pain in her past and her loyalty to Dreamworld is as unconditional as her love for senior executive Hayes. When murder and suicide strike, she agrees to a cover-up for the sake of Dr eamworld, and only gradually discovers what she has agreed to... Jane Goldman's first thriller brilliantly evokes the sunlit avenues and dingy maintenance tunnels of the world's favourite theme parks; she makes brilliant use of the large body of urban legends about theme parks, the stories people tell knowing them false and fearing they may be true. Avery finds herself investigating the sinister R&D department on an adjacent site--Goldman's informed speculations about the future of the entertainment industry make for some terrifying twists. Jane Goldman is already a star of teenage non-fiction publishing; her first novel is inventive, often charming and often terrifying.