Review: Rogues
- tatedecaro
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
4/5 stars
I read Keefe's Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder & Memory in Northern Ireland in 2020 for my book club, and really enjoyed his long-form journalism. Coming from someone who, at the time anyway, had read very little non-fiction, Keefe combines insightful and well-researched story-telling with a writing style that is compelling and narrative.
In Rogues, Keefe has curated 12 articles from his many works published in the New Yorker; tales of con-men, whistleblowers, mobsters, arms-dealers, morally questionable TV producers, and murderers, as well as a passionate anti-death penalty attorney, and... Anthony Bourdain.
The articles include:
A story about wine forgery, passing off cheaper wine to very rich men and telling them it once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. This was the only story in this collection that I actually around knew about, from a True Crime podcast!
The 1988 PanAm plane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the search for the truth by the very dedicated (some might say obsessed) brother of one of the victims.
The 2010 murder of three University of Alabama-Huntsville professors in the Biology department by one of their colleagues, Amy Bishop. Her background and motivations were fascinating, and tragic.
An HSBC employee who stole client data in Switzerland to expose rampant tax fraud - celebrated in France for revealing corrupt French businessmen, but resented (and arrested) in Switzerland for ruining their reputation as a safe place for shady deals.
The making of Donald Trump... How TV producer Mark Burnett, who created The Apprentice, catapulted Trump into the public eye and laid the groundwork for his presidential win in 2017. As Keefe aptly puts it, Burnett presented "a serially bankrupt carnival barker in the role of a man who might plausibly become the leader of the free world."
Other stories detail a Netherland-based crime family, insider trading, the hunt for and capture of Mexican drug cartel leader El Chapo, and Judy Clarke, defense lawyer for the Boston Bomber.
The only real outlier of the group was the final article about Anthony Bourdain. It was well-written and really quite lovely, though I never really understood why it was included as a story about "grifters, killers, rebels and crooks." It was originally published a year before Bourdain's suicide... a poignant read, having the hindsight to know what is soon to come.
Keefe is, above all, an excellent writer, and manages to present these 12 accounts in a relatively neutral way (with the exception of the Burnett-Trump piece), leaving the reader to interpret and the facts. A great read for any True Crime fan.
UP NEXT: The Hounding, by Xenobe, Purvis
Comments