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The Death of Trotsky

The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy

Author Josh Ireland
Ebook
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Dutton
On sale Feb 24, 2026 | 384 Pages | 9780593187111
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For fans of Ben Macintyre, the gripping story of the assassination of Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the deadly game of cat and mouse that preceded it

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky invited a man he knew only as Jacques Mornard into his study. Mornard waited for Trotsky to sit, then smashed an ice pick he had hidden in his raincoat into his skull.
 
For over a decade, Trotsky’s greatest enemy, Joseph Stalin, had been trying to arrange his murder. His agents had hunted him across Europe and into a lonely, bitter exile in Mexico. He had liquidated Trotsky’s family and friends, and yet Trotsky had always escaped his clutches. The man who changed this all was Ramón Mercader, a minor Spanish aristocrat and Soviet agent who had posed as Mornard, a dissolute Belgian playboy, and infiltrated Trotsky’s inner circle. 

In The Death of Trotsky, Josh Ireland traces the separate paths walked by each of these protagonists as they steadily draw closer and closer to that fateful encounter on August 20. Blending intimate historical detail and thrilling historical narrative, swinging from Moscow to Paris to Mexico, and taking in a cast of morally conflicted Russian spies, fanatical Mexican painters, and innocent American idealists, The Death of Trotsky delves into the lives of two fascinating, complex men locked in a life-or-death struggle that will bend the course of history.
© Ben Blossom
Josh Ireland is the author of Churchill & Son, The Traitors: A True Story of Blood, Betrayal and Deceit, an account of five Britons who betrayed their country during World War II. He has written for the Daily Telegraph, Prospect, Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. View titles by Josh Ireland

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For fans of Ben Macintyre, the gripping story of the assassination of Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the deadly game of cat and mouse that preceded it

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky invited a man he knew only as Jacques Mornard into his study. Mornard waited for Trotsky to sit, then smashed an ice pick he had hidden in his raincoat into his skull.
 
For over a decade, Trotsky’s greatest enemy, Joseph Stalin, had been trying to arrange his murder. His agents had hunted him across Europe and into a lonely, bitter exile in Mexico. He had liquidated Trotsky’s family and friends, and yet Trotsky had always escaped his clutches. The man who changed this all was Ramón Mercader, a minor Spanish aristocrat and Soviet agent who had posed as Mornard, a dissolute Belgian playboy, and infiltrated Trotsky’s inner circle. 

In The Death of Trotsky, Josh Ireland traces the separate paths walked by each of these protagonists as they steadily draw closer and closer to that fateful encounter on August 20. Blending intimate historical detail and thrilling historical narrative, swinging from Moscow to Paris to Mexico, and taking in a cast of morally conflicted Russian spies, fanatical Mexican painters, and innocent American idealists, The Death of Trotsky delves into the lives of two fascinating, complex men locked in a life-or-death struggle that will bend the course of history.

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© Ben Blossom
Josh Ireland is the author of Churchill & Son, The Traitors: A True Story of Blood, Betrayal and Deceit, an account of five Britons who betrayed their country during World War II. He has written for the Daily Telegraph, Prospect, Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. View titles by Josh Ireland

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