A Guide To True Crime and History Books by Patrick Radden Keefe

In 1972, Jean McConville vanished from her Belfast home. It was one of the most notorious disappearances of The Troubles. Everyone knew the I.R.A. was responsible, but fear kept neighbors silent. Decades later, bones were discovered on a beach. McConville’s children knew it was their mother when told a blue safety pin was still attached to the dress. This mesmerizing account uses the McConville case to explore Northern Ireland’s violent guerrilla war and its unresolved aftermath. It follows a society scarred by brutality: Children left traumatized, I.R.A. members embittered by a peace falling short of a united Ireland, wondering if their killings were justified warfare or murder. The narrative conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish, where consequences remain unreckoned.

Rogues brings together a dozen of Patrick Radden Keefe’s celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface, “They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: Crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism.

The Sackler dynasty is drenched in drama — baroque personal lives, bitter estate battles, boardroom brawls, glittering art collections, and Machiavellian legal warfare. Their calculated philanthropy burnished reputations while crushing opponents. The Sackler name adorned Harvard, the Met, Oxford, and the Louvre. They became one of the world’s richest families, though the fortune’s source remained vague — until it emerged they’d made and marketed a blockbuster painkiller that catalyzed the opioid crisis. This multi-generational saga traces their rise from early pharmaceutical success to the ruthless marketing of a potent drug, co-opting doctors, influencing regulators, and downplaying addiction — followed by scorched-earth legal tactics to evade accountability.

In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, Keefe investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: A charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who, from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown, managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people. The writer reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of undocumented immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them.

How does our government eavesdrop? Whom do they eavesdrop on? And is the interception of communication an effective means of predicting and preventing future attacks? These are some of the questions at the heart of Patrick Radden Keefe’s brilliant book, Chatter. In the late 1990s, when Keefe was a graduate student in England, he heard stories about an eavesdropping network led by the United States that spanned the planet. The system, known as Echelon, allowed America and its allies to intercept the private phone calls and e-mails of civilians and governments around the world. Taking the mystery of Echelon as his point of departure, Keefe explores the nature and context of communications interception, drawing together fascinating strands of history, fresh investigative reporting, and riveting, eye-opening anecdotes. The result is a bold and distinctive book, part detective story, part travel-writing, part essay on paranoia and secrecy in a digital age.