Creating a "menacing world where the reader is held hostage" ("Los Angeles Times"), the legendary author of "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" now trains her eye on the far frontiers of the Monroe Doctrine, where history dissolves into conspiracy--Dallas, 1963; Iran Contra in 1984--and fashions a moral thriller as hypnotic and provocative as any by Joseph Conrad or Graham Greene.

Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, the great-grandchildren of California pioneers, become involved in murder and betrayal.

In her latest forays into the American scene, Joan Didion covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer's gargantuan "manor" to the racial battlefields of New York's criminal courts. At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and...