The ZONE OF DECEIT Trilogy
Three thrillers. One decade of deceit. Loss of love, stolen lives, the consequences of resistance. Each book deepens the mystery and raises the stakes.
Living in The Zone of Deceit
Every writer brings their own obsessions to their work. Mine often revolve around the impermanence of truth — not always through censorship or violence, sometimes through a slower process when we confuse what is seen with what is true. Love is also key to my writing, whether in my six produced plays from my 20s, or this trilogy, written with much more of the supposed wisdom of age.
Phil and Ellie have a deep love, for each other and for Chris. The love is tested in CLIFFHANGER, with multiple false herrings that are eventually resolved -- for the moment.
The final books of ZONE OF DECEIT continue to delve into complex issues of love and loss: how identity collapses when the person you love most becomes a mystery, what you do when you realize the story you’re living isn’t the story you believed in, and how you deal with the fact that the new truth will change your own identity forever.
The setting in 1980s New York fascinates me not just because I lived in it and through it, but for the politics and the illusions. This was a decade based on the idea that everything could be bought, rebuilt, or destroyed for profit.
The world of CLIFFHANGER is drawn from this time, when illusion and corruption intertwined. The novel contains fragments and threads of acknowledged ‘80s history: the high-stakes real estate boom in New York, the destructive power of gentrification and the less studied ways in which it was preceded by planned destruction of entire neighborhoods, the startling and mysterious growth of the crack epidemic.
The trilogy builds toward political conspiracy and global consequence. Phil and Chris attempt to start their lives again, but a deeper mystery comes into play. As we learn more about what Ellie was doing in her final months, we catch glimpses of the vast Iran-Contra network and the thankless attempts of independent journalists to expose it. The scope broadens far beyond Manhattan, but the story always comes back to the Sanders family.
CLIFFHANGER begins the unravelling of this decade of deceit. THE COVER UP digs deeper into a house of mirrors. BEYOND THE BEYOND compel us to understand the cost of living in a world of lies. This is THE ZONE OF DECEIT. The facts reflect history. The emotions are true. The story is fiction through and through.
Thank you for reading CLIFFHANGER. Enjoy the rest!
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