The Casanova Embrace

A car bomb in Washington, D.C. leaves a body and a riddle: who was Eduardo Allesandro Palmero, and who wanted him dead?


CIA investigator Alfred Dobbs is tasked with reconstructing the last months of a Chilean dissident whose most effective weapon was not a gun or a coded cable, but seduction. As Dobbs sifts through testimony and fragments of a life lived in shadows, a different kind of spy story emerges—one built on charisma, obsession, and the quiet leverage of desire.


At the center are three women drawn into Palmero's orbit:


Marie DeFarge, a polished Washington insider who mistakes charm for truth;


Frederika Millspaugh, a restless seeker looking for meaning and finding a cause instead;


Penny Anne McCarthy, sharp, hungry, and convinced she can manage what others could not.


Each believes she understands the man. Each is wrong in a different way. As the lies begin to unravel, Dobbs follows a trail from Capitol Hill to the long reach of Chile's security apparatus, where love and ideology blur and nothing is freely given.


Who killed Eduardo Palmero? More to the point—who was using whom?