Joan Didion's (1934- ) The Last Thing He Wanted (1996) explores the covert arms trade and the government's menacing collusion in it resulting in Iran-Contra scandal. Elena McMahon, having walked out of a loveless marriage to a wealthy man, finds herself caught up in her semi-senile father's deal involving the shipment of arms to contra rebels. Standing in for her father, she flies in a plane bearing weapons to Costa Rica and from there to an unnamed Caribbean island. By this time, she has been tricked into traveling under a false passport, has learned that her father is dead, and realizes that she has been set up to take the fall in the event of an investigation. While on the island, she meets Treat Morrison, a troubleshooting ambassador-at-large. The two become lovers, but their attempt to rescue her from her situation leads to tragic consequences.

Like the heroine of Didion's best-known novel, Play It as It Lays (1970), Elena McMahon exhibits a passivity that seems to emerge from a profound despair about the possibility of taking any meaningful action. She is drawn deeper into the mystery behind the arms deal, motivated at the risk of her life simply by the desire to know what's really going on. What she does not discover, but what the novel reveals, is that this action, like all of history in Didion's view, is governed by chance and accident. As Treat Morrison explains to the anonymous reporter/narrator of the novel, "You think you have it covered and you find out you don't have it covered worth a goddamn."

A swiftly paced story and a searing indictment of the corruption within and without official government circles, The Last Thing He Wanted is a powerful reminder of the danger of a government that steps outside the law to achieve its goals.

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