The essential point in this history of the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940 is that it is a complex story where the outcome is very well known, as are the details of the assassin and his reasons for his crime. Trotsky’s sudden and violent death is not a ‘whodunnit’.  

On 20 August 1940, Trotsky invited into his study in his house in Mexico City a man whom he and others knew as Jacques Mornard. He waited for Trotsky to sit down, then taking out a hidden ice pick he hit Trotsky on the head causing catastrophic brain injury, and his death.

Josh Ireland has explained lucidly the core mode of, and reason for, what was essentially a politically sanctioned and financed death. There is a discernible balance in the tension in the narrative with the parts moving into place and the delay until a suitable moment.    

As a matter of intense Russian politics, initially, Joseph Stalin had authorised and subsidised staff and arrangements for the murder of Trotsky. Stalin’s agents had hunted Trotsky across Europe and on the way killed Trotsky’s family and friends, and yet Trotsky had always escaped.

The deep animosity that Stalin and Trotsky had for each other went far beyond political differences, although the latter certainly was a major factor. From the outset of their meeting each other there was a personal revulsion.  

The prologue to the book covers another political assassination directed from Moscow: the elimination of that particular victim was important to Stalin, but the real object of ‘the rabid obsession’ lived far away in Mexico.  

Mornard, the assassin, purportedly a dissolute Belgian playboy, was in truth Ramón Mercader, a minor Spanish aristocrat and Soviet agent who had infiltrated Trotsky’s inner circle of friends, and as importantly the properties where Trotsky was to be found.

Initially, in Mexico, a violent attack by a number of armed men on the barricaded premises where Trotsky lived was ineffective: the appropriate balance between preparation and opportunity had not been found. Trotsky survived that, but the pursuit continued.

After the killing, Mercader was captured easily by the Mexican authorities and he was in due course convicted of the murder of Trotsky. A model prisoner throughout his time, Mercader completed his 20-year sentence, returned to Russia and received awards and a pension.  

The modern specialist in close protection duties might grimace at the naiveté of the security arrangements for Trotsky, yet there was a real sense, conveyed admirably by Josh Ireland, that there could be only one winner in the whole episode.        

The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy by Josh Ireland. Published by John Murray, 366pp, £25.