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, was called "startlingly original and unsettling" by Tom Piccirilli, a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, and won the DarkFuse Reader's Choice Award for best novel. His surrealistic follow-up, Factory Town, was called "A hallucinatory descent into an urban hell" by Bram Stoker award-winning author Ramsey Campbell. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English where he is known by students and faculty alike as the deranged writer guy.
Bassoff's third novel is filled with characters with few, if any, socially redeeming qualities. The Incurables is set in the early 1950s, and Dr. Walter Freeman's nearly thirty years at the same mental institution are about to come to an end. Despite his many successes in treating the most insane of patients through a process he developed called a transorbital lobotomy, the times are changing and the institution's board is eager to move on to more humane treatments using modern medications to modify the behaviors of the asylum's residents.
Instead to changing his ways, Dr. Freeman sets out on his own with his most recent success and travels the country preaching his cure for many mental conditions. At the same time there is a father and son team of a preacher who is convinced his son is the Messiah.
If you like your horror dark and violent, The Incurables is most definitely for you. It's a book where once you start reading, you won't want to put it down. There are no heroes in this tale filled with delightfully despicable characters. Personally, I found the work to be a criticism of both science and religion, and whichever you put your faith in, there is no redemption to be found.
The Incurables is published by Darkfuse and is available in both paperback and e-book formats. If you subscribe to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited you can read this work at no additional charge. Plus, if you are an Amazon Prime member you can read this book for FREE as your monthly selection from the Kindle Owners Lending Library.
Recommended.
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