The Last Thing He Wanted

The Last Thing He Wanted is a novel by Joan Didion. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996. The story centers on Elena McMahon, a reporter for The Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 United States presidential election to care for her father after her mother's death. In an unusual turn of events, she inherits his position as an arms dealer for the U.S. Government in Central America. In this sparsely written, quick-paced narrative, Elena struggles to cope with the spies, American military personnel, and the consequences of her father's errors that are waiting for her on a small island in the Lesser Antilles. Plot Elena McMahon, the former wife of a Los Angeles oil tycoon, quits her job reporting on the 1984 United States presidential election for The Washington Post in order to care for her father, Dick McMahon, following her mother's death. Her father has arranged an upcoming deal, in which he has been promised $1 million in exchange for organizing the shipment of arms to Costa Rica in order to supply the contra forces in Nicaragua, but he is too ill to escort the shipment. Elena agrees to go in his place but when the plane lands in a remote air strip as opposed to San José, she is forced to evoke the name of her father's partner, Max Epperson, despite not knowing whether he really exists. As a result, she is offered a ride to the capital, surrendering her passport to her hotel. While staying there, an American passport bearing the name Elise Meyers and her photo is slipped under the door of her room and when she checks out of the hotel, her own passport has gone missing. On the instructions of her father's colleagues, she flies to an unnamed island in the Lesser Antilles, unaware that her father has already died. The story is told by an unnamed narrator, who knew Elena in her previous life as a Hollywood socialite and who is writing a biography on Treat Morrison, a high-level government official in the State Department. Treat is aware of rumors of a proposed assassination attempt on the U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean island on which Elena is staying, Alexander Brokaw. The narrator documents her journey to uncover the plot unfolding on this island, where U.S. special forces have been setting up a base.