The last thing he wanted1996

This is a story that begins when Elena McMahon, estranged from her powerful husband in California and covering the 1984 primary campaign for the Washington Post, makes her way to Florida to see her father, Dick McMahon, who does deals.

Tracing Elena's fevered trajectory, the narrator makes it clear that this is her version of what happened, not the version offered by the F.B.I. interviews or by Senator Mark Berquist or by the late Ambassador-at-Large Treat Morrisson.

What happens is a story that shifts quickly from Elena's well-mapped life expensive people and political fund-raisers to a journey without maps, an investigation into the randomness of history, into intentions spun out of control and gone wrong, arms dealing, covert action, assassination. As connections are made between...