Most readers of Josh Ireland's Death of Trotsky will already know the basic outline of the story: Leon Trotsky falls out with Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924. He proves no match to Stalin; his faction loses critical Politburo debates; he is exiled, eventually lands in Mexico City, where he is assassinated on August 20, 1940, by a Stalin agent, wielding a pickaxe to the skull, no less. His assassin, Ramon Mercader, had wormed his way into Trotsky's inner circle while at the