Dreamworld [Paperback]

When it comes to crime in Dreamworld, the sprawling Florida vacation resort might as well be never-never land. That's because the bad things that happen thereneverreach the press. As an ambitious rookie cop on the community's security force, twenty-five-year-old Sylvia Avery toes the company line, smoothing over disturbances that might tarnish the utopian image of Dreamworld and its hugely popular ImagiNation theme park.
But that flawless facade is shattered when a horrific murder-suicide takes place on property. Thrown into a company-sponsored cover-up, Avery discovers bizarre and disturbing experiments taking place at Dreamworld's ultrasecret research center. Torn between her loyalty to her new boss -- and lover -- and a need to uncover the terrifying truth, Avery enters the dark and twisted world beneath Dreamworld's picture-perfect surface. Now, in a place where fantasy rules and illusion is everything, Avery is about to come face-to-face with a cold and deadly reality.Jane Goldman is the author of Dreamworld, a Simon & Schuster book.Chapter One

Of all the songs that accompany theme-park attractions, which is the most insidiously catchy, the most precious, can't-get-it-out-of-your head annoying? It's a Small World from the ride of the same name at Walt Disney World, perhaps? Or My Home Is Your Home from the not dissimilar Global Village Cruise at Dreamworld?

Up until about three seconds ago, before she heard the thunder of footsteps on the concrete staircase behind her drowning out the distant festival of theme-park noise from above, before she felt hands on the back of her furry costume pushing her through a doorway, before she heard the door slam and struggled to see who was behind her and felt an arm snake around her and plunge something sharp into her thorax, Lisa Schaeffer would have loved to have debated the matter at length.

Lisa Schaeffer liked that kind of discussion very much. There were few things she enjoyelã&