The Obedient Assassin: A Novel
This historical thriller offers a reinterpretation of the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940 by Soviet agent Ramón Mercader. The killer was an anti-Franco soldier in the Spanish Civil War when Stalin’s NKVD recruited him for the death mission, and he began a life stuffed with spy craft: the blur of false identities; the women his job required he seduce; glitzy parties with Diego Rivera and Pablo Picasso. Then the murder. But the book isn’t a beach read. The writing is densely packed, and the characters make John le Carré’s brooders look like party animals. Davidson is attempting to use the literary imagination to animate and examine these times and these people, and readerly patience is required. Did Mercader’s mother really help recruit him into this mess? And did the NKVD really intend for him to be only backup in case the real plot went haywire, as it did? History buffs will know the answers, or will dig for them, and they are whom the book is meant for. --Don Crinklaw