The Scapegoat is, I think, an even better book [than Mary Lee Settle's last novel, Blood Tie. Like Blood Tie, it shows the inner workings of a prodigious variety of people, but these people are somehow closer to us, less brittle, more genuine, their contradictions and self-delusions more subtly dealt with. Hard-bitten Mother Jones ("sitting there dumpy like a sweet little old lady, about the shape of a keg of dynamite") grows as familiar to us as our own grandmothers. We see into the very soul of Annunziata Pagano as she coolly, firmly summons the Italian-mama hysteria that will help her control a crisis….

In one sense, The Scapegoat is a straightforward, linear novel. Its four parts cover, in proper order, a single period from 3 o'clock one afternoon to 8 o'clock the following morning. But in another sense, it's more of an octopus shape, with the repercussions from some...