The Gray Zone: A Novel. Daphna Edwards Ziman. Greenleaf Book Group Press. June 2011. 324 pp. hb. ISBN #: 9781608321100.Kelly Jensen is one tough cookie, hiding her childhood and young adult abusive background and pain. She's fleeing with her two children but the reader won't know for sure precisely what she's attempting to escape for quite some time. It's well worth the wait!
At the same time, an aspiring State Senator, Congressman Porter Garrett has been found dead. It doesn't take very long for the police, FBI, and attorney, Jake Brooks, to link Kelly and another young woman to the grisly death. But now that evidence and private investigator activities are revealing even deeper connections among politicians, bankers, foster parents, and birth parents, Kelly disappears off the radar. It seems she has a much larger plan that will free her, if she can carry it out. However, luck isn't with her and the Court orders her placed under the supervision of Jake. Should she trust him with some or everything of what she knows? Is he truly trying to do the right thing by her or is he just pursuing something he can't have, a pattern he always followed in his younger years as a peer of the murdered congressman?
Kelly is an amazingly intriguing character. She elicits profuse sympathy, but that just as quickly turns to admiration and wonder about her intelligence and nerves of steel! The reader remains totally enthralled as Kelly carries out the ultimate plan to convict the guilty, remove the final chains blocking a free future, and embrace a different way of life that promises hope and perhaps even joy!
Daphna Edwards Ziman has penned an amazingly gripping, mysterious, and superb crime thriller that is a must read for anyone loving this genre!!!
