Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

by Patrick Radden Keefe

From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue by one of the most decorated journalists of our time.

Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface, "They reflect on some of my abiding 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 appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Audiobook, History, Crime, Essays, Short Stories

356 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 28, 2022

About the author

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York, and The New York Review of Books. He received the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story "A Loaded Gun," was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and is also the recipient of an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellowship at the New America Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews

[Jaidee · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 "consistently superb, insightful and fascinating" stars !!!

2023 Honorable Mention Read with High Distinction

So I do not think I could have enjoyed a book more !

Mr. Keefe has curated twelve of his articles into this collection I could not have been a more satisfied reader.

A warm thank you to Peter B. whose review prompted me to shortlist this collection.

Forget getting your Dad a baseball cap, your hubby a sweater and your brother a bottle of bourbon. Get the most important dudes in your life this book for Father's day. It is simply off the charts excellent. My sweetheart and two of my guy friends will be getting a copy either for Father's Day or upcoming birthday....hid this because my boyfriend would never read a spoiler alert lol

Mr. Keefe writes with a discerning simplicity and clarity that I adore in long form journalism. He is intelligent and probing and presents fairly neutral viewpoints on this most interesting assortment of characters which are all rogues in their very own way. He has a healthy dose of skepticism and does not provide much interpretation to allow the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and viewpoints. I was completely immersed in each and every article and quite frankly could read this forever and ever....

The collection is full of 4, 4.5 and 5 star reads that I rounded up to 5 because I was amazed that there was not a dud in the bunch. I will list the article , my rating and brief comment on content.

1. The Jefferson Bottles ....4 stars... wine forgeries...rich dudes... and Thomas Jefferson !

2. Crime Family...4.5 stars...a serial killer and his less evil sisters duke it out in criminal court in Holland...who's zooming who ?

3. The Avenger...4.5 stars... the brother of one of the Lockerbie plane crash victims and his obsessive search for the criminals and bomb maker...poignant and detailed

4. The Empire of Edge...4 stars....denials and gradients of greed in insider trading

5. A Loaded Gun...4.5 stars...an engaging and sharp exploration of the life of Amy Bishop and her possible motivations for the multiple murders she committed at her college...absolute riveting and tragic

6. The Hunt for El Chapo...4 stars...the hunt, capture and escape of a Mexican drug lord

7. Winning...4.5 stars...a fascinating look at the creator of Survivor and the Apprentice and the voting in of Donald the Orange.

8. Swiss Bank Heist...4.5 stars... is the whistle blower a heroic sociopath and is Switzerland truly neutral ?

9. The Prince of Marbella..4 stars...the framing and capture of an international arms dealer

10. The Worst of the Worst...5 stars...an examination of Judy Clarke...the defense lawyer of the Boston Bomber...this one riled me up so much with tears and outrage...can justice ever truly be served

11. Buried Secrets...5 stars...a most fascinating tale of Iron Ore in Guinea and all the corrupt sharks wanting a piece....very anxiety provoking

12. Journeyman...5 stars....a beautiful tribute to Anthony Bourdain...my heart ached and I reminisced on all the many episodes of Parts Unknown that I relished...rest in peace....

Believe me...the men in your life will thank you for this gift on Father's Day !

[Matt Quann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's how I go about reading nonfiction.

I'll pick up a book that's won an award or has been recommended by a friend, and I'll poke my way through it over weeks or months. I largely see nonfiction books as bitter green vegetables on my plate: good for me, even if I don't enjoy them. So, finally, I decided to give the much-lauded Patrick Radden Keefe's Rogues a read after an NPR review touted it as the perfect sampler of Keefe's style.

Lemme tell you folks, I've just been reading the wrong types of nonfiction.

Over twelve stories, previously published in the New Yorker, Keefe took me through tales of arms dealers, gangsters, insider trading, reality TV, lawyers who defend clients facing the death penalty, and a rousing look at Anthony Bourdain’s legacy. All of the above is done with a sharp research and an economy of language that had me marvelling at how efficiently Keefe is able to lay out the particulars of a story.

I mean, it'd be one thing if the writing alone was particularly good, but the subjects that Keefe has chosen are intoxicatingly compelling. Some of these people engage in some truly deplorable activities, see the El Chapo piece, and Keefe's attempt to paint their portraits without having ever spoken to them makes psychological profiles by proxy (he calls them "write-arounds"). It's fascinating how well he's able to reconcile two differing opinions from sources with stone cold evidence or a pattern of behaviour he's established in his reporting.

Altogether, a banging set of stories that have introduced me to an entirely new avenue of nonfiction to pursue: anything reported by Patrick Radden Keefe.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary journalism at its finest and Keefe is certainly the perfect writer to bring to life some of these, many unheard of, incidents/people to our attention. I had three favorites, the hunt for and the capture of the notorious drug kingpin, El Capo. Do you know that he had 90 tunnels dug into the United States, many which were air-conditioned. A wall wouldn't have helped here. A chilling expose.

Mark Burnett and the making of the Apprentice and the rebranding of Donald Trump. I'm sure many are with me in the wishing that this was one genie we could put back in the bottle. Wonder if Burnett can sleep at night?

The last story was the life of Bourdain. A bittersweet look at the man and his career.

All included in this book is well done and oh so interesting.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are wild tales, but they’re all true, each scrupulously fact-checked by my brilliant colleagues at The New Yorker. Together, I hope that they illuminate something about crime and punishment, the slipperiness of situational ethics, the choices we make as we move through this world, and the stories we tell ourselves and others about those choices.

After finishing Rogues, I find myself immediately going back and questioning the title. A “rogue” is defined as “a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel. A playfully mischievous person; scamp”, and honestly, that language doesn’t feel adequate to capture the people Patrick Radden Keefe has written about here. Even the subtitle “True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks” barely covers the range of “roguery” that goes from someone like the druglord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán (reputed to have ordered the murders of tens of thousands of people) to Anthony Bourdain (decidedly more scamp than scoundrel, he definitely seems out of place in the company of terrorists, murderers, and arms dealers.) In twelve long articles that have formerly been published in The New Yorker, Keefe shines as an investigative journalist who gets to the bottom of every story, and whether he’s writing about criminals, their victims, or his own reaction to a situation, he has a real knack for emphasising the humanity behind the headlines. Overall — and this isn’t Keefe’s fault — this collection made me a little depressed: There are so many bad people out there, hurting other people in the pursuit of money (which of course I already knew), and governments supporting the rogues if it suits their mandates (which of course I already knew), and victims struggling, fruitlessly, to find justice (which of course I already knew) that reading this all at once felt a little overwhelming. Consistently well-written and globe-trottingly fascinating, Rogues should be a satisfying followup for readers of Keefe’s recent bestsellers. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Of the twelve entries, these are a few bits that made me go Hmmm for one reason or another.

Could Rodenstock have become so proficient at making fake wine that his fakes tasted as good as, or even better than, the real thing? When I asked Parker about the bottle, he hastened to say that even the best wine critics are fallible. Yet he reiterated that the bottle was spectacular. “If that was a fake, he should be a mixer,” Parker said. “It was wonderful.”

In “The Jefferson Bottles” (originally published in 2007), we are introduced to Hardy Rodenstock: a German wine collector who repeatedly uncovered forgotten stashes of rare old wine (including, as per the title, a case of French wine intended for Thomas Jefferson with his name etched on the bottles), which Rodenstock then sold for huge sums at auction. The narrative primarily focuses on American billionaire Bill Koch — avid art and wine collector — who, when he was told that the various wines he had bought that originated with Rodenstock were probably all fakes, embarked on his other great passion: suing the pants off anyone who crossed him. The article traces the investigation into Rodenstock’s sketchy career, explores the world of top tier œnophilia, and encourages us to join Keefe in feeling superior to the kitschy Koch (with his “cowboy room” [Keefe’s quote marks] filled with Remington bronzes and Custer’s firearms) as Keefe joins Koch in a glass of fine wine from the billionaire’s cellar. This is the first article in the collection and I was immediately struck by two things: There is definitely a liberal political slant to Keefe’s writing and there’s a jarring out-of-syncness to reading out-of-date investigative journalism. At the end of each entry, Keefe does update the story and this one ends in part with, “In 2018, Hardy Rodenstock died, at age seventy-six” and Bill Koch continues to pursue his lawsuits “very happily, to this day.”

Dornstein ushered me up to the third floor, where two cramped rooms were devoted to Lockerbie. In one room, shelves were lined with books about espionage, aviation, terrorism, and the Middle East. Jumbo binders housed decades of research. In the other room, Dornstein had papered the walls with mug shots of Libyan suspects. Between the two rooms was a large map of Lockerbie, with hundreds of colored pushpins indicating where the bodies had fallen. He showed me a cluster where first-class passengers landed, and another where most of the economy passengers were found. Like the coroner in a police procedural, Dornstein derives such clinical satisfaction from his work that he can narrate the grisliest findings with cheerful detachment. Motioning at a scattering of pushpins some distance from the rest, he said, “They were the youngest, smallest children. If you look at the physics of it, they were carried by the wind.”

In “The Avenger” (originally published 2015), Keefe writes about Ken Dornstein whose older brother David was on Pan Am Flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. This was so interesting in the details but had a weird feeling as we follow along with an investigative journalist as he tells the story of an investigative journalist who was looking for answers in his brother’s death (Dornstein would go on to write the book The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky and film a three part documentary for Frontline called “My Brother’s Bomber”.) One thread that interested me in particular: The CIA linked the timer on the bomb that was planted on the plane to a Swiss electronics company whose owner doesn’t deny providing timing devices to the Libyan regime over the years, telling Dornstein “Switzerland is neutral, and I’m neutral in this thing.” Keefe reached out to this man and reports: In an email, (Edwin) Bollier told me that any suggestion that he was linked to the destruction of Pan Am 103 is a “despicable accusation” and a “fictional idea.” His email address, which I discovered on his website, is Mr.Lockerbie@gmail.com. (And even though Dornstein was seeking, and found, bigger fish than Bollier, “rogue” doesn’t feel sufficient to describe even him.)

(Mark) Burnett is fluent in the jargon of self-help, and he has published two memoirs, both written with Bill O’Reilly’s ghostwriter, which double as manuals on how to get rich. One of them, titled Jump In! Even if You Don’t Know How to Swim, now reads like an inadvertent metaphor for the Trump presidency. “Don’t waste time on overpreparation,” the book advises. At the 2004 panel, Burnett made it clear that with The Apprentice he was selling an archetype. “Donald is the current-day version of a tycoon,” he said. “Donald will say whatever Donald wants to say. He takes no prisoners. If you’re Donald’s friend, he’ll defend you all day long. If you’re not, he’s going to kill you. And that’s very American. It’s like the guys who built the West.”

In “Winning” from 2019, Keefe tells the story of producer Mark Burnett and his role in raising (and polishing) Donald Trump’s profile. It would seem, from this article, that both Burnett and Trump are rogues. Keefe recalls the 2016 Emmys where Jimmy Kimmel blamed Mark Burnett for Donald Trump’s resurrection, making it clear that Trump would have never successfully run for president had it not been for “the sneaky little crumpet-muncher” Burnett (who declined an interview with the author). In the concluding update for this story, Keefe writes that after Trump lost his bid for reelection, “He retreated to Mar-a-Lago, to plot his comeback. If he doesn’t run for president again, it will almost certainly involve television, and if it involves television, it could very well involve Mark Burnett.”

For the next two years, Soiles and a team of agents from the SOD pored over old case files, studying Kasser’s operation. But gathering sufficient evidence of his involvement in various crimes was difficult, and pursuing Kassar for the Achille Lauro charges might be barred, because it would amount to double jeopardy. By early 2006, Soiles and his colleagues had decided that they needed to attempt something radical. Rather than try Kassar for a crime he’d committed in the past, they would use the strong conspiracy laws in the United States to prosecute him for something that he intended to do in the future. They would infiltrate Kassar’s organization and set him up in a sting. Many European countries have “agent provocateur” laws to guard against entrapment, but in an American court it would be difficult for a trafficker with Kassar’s history to protest that he was in no way disposed to clandestine weapons deals.

In “The Prince of Marbella” (originally published in 2010), Keefe tells the story of fabulously successful international arms dealer Monzer Al Kassar. Like Bollier above, who takes no personal responsibility for what anyone does with the timing devices he might sell to bomb makers, Kassar was able to position himself as a mere middleman between arms manufacturers and they who would rather buy their weapons without a papertrail. This wasn’t technically illegal — and Kassar reportedly worked with the American government during the Iran Contra Affair — but the Americans eventually decided to go after him and they set him up in a sting operation. The undercover buyers said that they represented Colombia’s FARC guerrilla forces, and as American Special Forces often teamed with the Colombian government to suppress the rebels, selling to FARC could be interpreted as intending to attack Americans (and based on Kassar saying on tape that he’d be happy for Americans to die in the conflict, he has been serving a sentence at a federal prison in Marion, Illinois since 2009). I have no love for Kassar or other underground arms dealers, but even as the sympathetic Keefe describes the sting, it sounds a bit roguish, too.

All told, Bourdain has traveled to nearly a hundred countries and has filmed 248 episodes, each a distinct exploration of the food and culture of a place. The secret ingredient of the show is the when-in-Rome avidity with which he partakes of indigenous custom and cuisine, whether he is pounding vodka before plunging into a frozen river outside St. Petersburg or spearing a fatted swine as the guest of honor at a jungle longhouse in Borneo. Like a great white shark, Bourdain tends to be photographed with his jaws wide open, on the verge of sinking his teeth into some tremulous delicacy.

“Journeyman” from 2017 is an admiring biography of celebrity chef, bestselling author, and gastronomic world-traveller Anthony Bourdain. Other than some early drug abuse, nothing about Bourdain fits into the “true crime” profile of this collection, but I guess plenty of people might have described him as roguish. This was a hard one to read, knowing that this oversized personality would eventually take his own life, and it was definitely uncomfortable to read, “Bourdain often thinks about dying; more than once, he told me that if he got ‘a bad chest x-ray’, he would happily renew his acquaintance with heroin.” This is a strong article, an interesting read, but it did feel out of place here.

In addition to the above rogues, we meet mass workplace shooter Amy Bishop; banker Hervé Falciani, who leaked the details of thousands of HSBC’s secret, tax-evading accountholders (“In France, Falciani looked like a whistle-blower; in Switzerland, he looked like a thief”); Mexican druglord “El Chapo” (and as this article was mostly about the first great hunt for Guzmán, it was awkward for it to end with “they caught him but he escaped and was later caught again” and then have a parenthetical update that said “and he escaped again and was caught again”; jarring way to update the out-of-date); there is insider trading, the modern-day looting of African resources, a Dutch gangster (as well as the abetting family who eventually turned on him); and celebrated defense attourney Judy Clarke — who represents “the worst of the worst” in capital crime cases — and follow along on her failure to save Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnev from the death penalty. (In July 2020, the death penalty was overturned, but in March of 2022, “the court voted to reinstate it”.)

Although interesting and probing, Keefe is definitely not impartial in his storytelling. When billionaire George Soros is working behind the scenes on the world stage, he’s doing good; when billionaire Bill Koch says he wants to collect rare wines and never drink them (because collecting is the point), he’s a bit of a clown; when Israeli billionaire investor Beny Steinmetz flips a mining contract (in what he calls a standard practise), he’s a criminal (and by Keefe’s account, he probably is; Steinmetz is currently appealing a conviction for bribery). I did like how Keefe puts himself in the story — I enjoyed travelling the world with him as he follows leads and don’t really mind seeing the people he meets through his eyes — but for anyone expecting journalistic detachment, this is not that. Still a highly interesting collection.

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks is a collection of 12 articles that Patrick Radden Keefe wrote for The New Yorker. The stories and personalities of those who are featured are interesting.

Keefe is an excellent writer and I am an ardent fan of non-fiction. I want to read his books, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. I don't read short stories very often and found that a book of Keefe's articles didn't keep me fully engaged.

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sign me up for everything this guy has written!

I'm not a true crime fan so I'm surprised I loved this book so much. Not all the chapters are about criminals per se (one is about Anthony Bourdain. I guess that's where the "rebels" in the title comes from) but they were all fascinating with the exception (for me) of the one on an international arms dealer and the one about El Chapo (I cheated and skimmed those two).

All the others held me enthralled and I now have to consider reading more in the genre - at least anything Patrick Radden Keefe has written.

4.5 stars rounded up.

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rogues is a collection of true stories about grifters, killers, rebels and crooks — The subjects include fake wine, a fascination with a historic tragedy, insider trading, a notorious drug lord, hanging out with Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam, and more!

This is my second book by Patrick Radden Keefe and I continue to be impressed by his level of detail and research. His investigative journalism skills are top notch and the stories shared in Rogues solidify that people are interesting and complex.

[Donna Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick Radden Keefe is a much celebrated journalist with a list of honors and awards as long as your arm. He first drew my notice in 2019 with Say Nothing, his searing, meticulously researched book on The Troubles, that period of guerilla warfare in the North of Ireland, as its people tried (yet again) to break free of British imperial rule. That book rattled me to my core, and when I received a review copy for this book, I understood that there couldn’t possibly be another book as deeply affecting as his last. And I was right; it isn’t. It is, however, interesting in most places, and Keefe can write like nobody’s business. This book is for sale now; my thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the galley.

Each chapter of this book is on a different topic; ostensibly, each is about a different rogue, or group of rogues, or—in one case—a whole family of rogues! However, there are a couple of chapters where that isn’t really true, and that is my strongest quibble with anything presented there. Most, however, are unquestionably about scoundrels. The first, about an obscenely wealthy wine snob who finds himself with some counterfeit wine, makes my blood boil. A private plane, burning enough fuel to melt the polar caps, or to transport a good many people to work for an entire year, is dispatched to fetch some wine. This one makes me cranky enough, and is lengthy enough, that I abandon it halfway in. The next, “Crime Family,” is a riveting expose of a notorious, yet strangely beloved Scandinavian kidnapper whose sister turns him in when she senses that he’s spiraling out of control. She owns five armored cars, because she knows her brother will never rest until one of them is dead. Chilling, indeed! Other favorites are about El Chapo, and about Mark Burnett, the promoter that turned Trump into The Apprentice, splicing and editing sufficiently to make the man sound coherent and businesslike. There is one about the Lockerbie bombing, and another about insider trading, that I tried to care about but couldn’t, so I skipped those. And there’s one about Jeffrey Epstein, too.

All told, this book is a meal. Even if you do as I did, and skip those that don’t spark your interest, this is a well written, worthwhile collection.

Recommended to those that enjoy well crafted journalism.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how PRK writes. He’s so good at storytelling and crafting narrative. This collection is full of incredible characters and stories. I loved about 75% of them and found the other 25% really good but just not as much my interests.

[Peter Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many non-fiction readers will be aware of Patrick Radden Keefe's work by now. Empire of Pain was one of the best reviewed books of 2021, a searing exposé of the Sackler family and the opioid crisis they helped initiate. I can personally recommend Say Nothing, a fresh and hugely compelling exploration of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Rogues is a collection of Radden Keefe's longform articles that originally appeared in the New Yorker. As the title suggests they focus on all manner of rascals, from lighter accounts of mischief makers and disruptors, to heavier fare that examines the lives of terrorists and murderers.

And I have to be completely honest: I didn't love all of them. I'm not interested in the illegal drug trade, so The Hunt for El Chapo was a piece that I found myself skimming through. Similarly, The Prince of Marbella, about the efforts to catch an international arms dealer didn't grab me at all. And the opening article which takes a look at the rare fine wine industry, was a strange choice to start the book, in my opinion. But this is all down to personal taste, I'm sure they will have plenty of admirers besides my dissenting views.

However, I'm happy to say that there were several pieces I thoroughly enjoyed. The Worst of the Worst is the intriguing tale of the attorney Judy Clarke and her efforts to defend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the notorious Boston bombers. Journeyman is a beautiful account of time spent with Anthony Bourdain, the food critic and author, which left me saddened at his tragic, untimely demise. But the standout article in my opinion is A Loaded Gun, so good that it prompts me to add an extra star to this review. It investigates Amy Bishop, a professor at the University of Alabama who opened fire on six colleagues during a staff meeting in 2010. It's a masterpiece of true crime reporting, a riveting delve into a highly unusual mass shooting that might have been prevented if earlier events in Bishop's life had been given due care and attention. It's still available on the New Yorker website and I highly recommend taking some time out to read it.

It's a pretty wide-ranging collection and there is something here for everybody. It's hard not to be enthralled by Radden Keefe's inquisitive mind - he possesses a dogged inclination to get to the truth of the matter at hand. But he's also a talented storyteller, dangling clues and dropping revelations that compel the reader to keep turning the pages. I'm sure that curious, whirring brain has many more fascinating tales to recount, and I can't wait to bury my nose in them.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a big fan of PRK's work, but this compilation of his work for the New Yorker feels like a cash grab. I get that investigative journalists have been cramped by the pandemic years, but I dislike being lured into this kind of work when it feels like the author's need for a new garage is the driving force. That said, go read "Say Nothing" or "Empire of Pain" and be dazzled by some serious 5 star writing.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twelve stories originally published in The New Yorker by multi-prize-winning journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. The linking thread is that all are focussed on a particular person and that to some extent they all share a degree of notoriety. These range from a man accused of forging eye-wateringly expensive wine to a death penalty attorney who specialises in defending the worst of the worst. The least notorious person featured is probably Anthony Bourdain, the cook turned writer and television documentarian who took his own life in 2018.

It was the Bourdain story that drew me to this collection; I’ve long been a fan of both his writing and his television shows. The author is strong on research and in addition he spends a good deal of time talking to the subjects or at least people close to them. In this case he’d clearly spent a decent chunk of time with AB and my sense was that they’d gotten on well. I’m not sure I learned a whole lot I didn’t already know about the man, but as with all of the stories this is a very well written piece. My only regret (I think this is what I was looking for) is that it really adds nothing to the mystery of why Bourdain killed himself, at the top of his fame, just over a year after Keefe published his story.

Of the other stories, I was particularly drawn to the wine forger (it seems that this crime is almost impossible to prove) and the very sad tale of Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist at the University of Alabama who shot six colleagues during a routine faculty meeting in 2010. The Bishop case is a very strange one indeed, her motivation for carrying out this callous deed being very hard to fathom. But then it’s discovered that she’d shot and killed her younger brother in 1986, an incident officially ruled at the time as an accident. This really is a brilliant collection of true life tales, all comprising just the right amount of intrigue and enough detail to really bring each story to life. In my view it’s a collection not to be missed.

[Marta Cava]

Si mai Patrick Radden Keefe escriu un llibre amb les seves llistes de la compra, me'l compraré i llegiré igualment

[Barbara K · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of years ago I read Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, and was absolutely transfixed by the research and the writing. I remain in awe of his ability to pull together so many (real-life) characters, themes and events, and build a comprehensive story of the Troubles starting from one incident that becomes a symbol for all the pain and confusion of the era.

Each of the pieces of investigative journalism in Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks all published in The New Yorker, have that same attention to detail and ability to follow threads and convince people to reveal secrets. A guy dupes collectors all over the world with fake bottles of antique wine, including some allegedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. A university professor who shoots up her colleagues after being denied tenure turns out to have a history of violence that has been kept under the carpet for decades. The capture - and actual retention in a prison - of the drug lord El Chapo. The challenges of African countries to actually benefit financially from their natural assets. An acute, insightful portrait of the late Anthony Bourdain. And more.

I will confess that I skipped one, "How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success". The January 6 hearings are a current reminder of the horrific aftermath of Burnett's marketing of Trump.

[Sheree | Keeping Up With The Penguins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winning – an essay about reality TV producer Mark Burnett’s role in delivering the Trump presidency – is a stand-out, a highlight in a blazing, brilliant collection.

The Worst Of The Worst – a profile of the defense attorney in the capital case of one of the Boston Marathon bombers – was also incredibly moving and thought provoking.

Journeyman – a portrait of Anthony Bourdain – was so desperately sad, in the wake of his death in 2018.

Honestly, I could talk about the stories in Rogues for hours. Each and every one is masterfully crafted, perfectly balanced, and totally gripping.

My full review of Rogues is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.

[kelly ♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

say nothing and empire of pain are two of the best nonfic books i have ever read, so i am fully looking forward to this one!

[Shannon M (Canada) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seldom read nonfiction books, but this one sounded interesting. It was. Fascinating in fact. These are twelve essays originally published in The New Yorker written by prize-winning journalist Patrick Keene. With one exception, they are all focused on crime, criminals, murderers, swindlers, those who go after them, and those who defend them.

The Jefferson Bottles: A billionaire is bilked and takes revenge through the courts. A sarcastic look at the very, very rich, how they waste their money on trivial pursuits, and how a con man got a few of their millions. My favourite quote: Bridget Rooney walked in with the couple’s one-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, in her arms. “We’re talking fake wine,” Koch said. “Want to join us?” Rooney took a seat next to him. She wore a rope of enormous pearls around her neck, and didn’t seem to notice that Kaitlin was chewing on them.

Crime Family: The patriarch of a crime family in Holland is incarcerated on the basis of testimony by his sister (who was also a criminal-defence lawyer working for him and his colleagues). Willem Holleeder started out as a kidnapper, then branched into other types of criminal activities. He wanted to be Holland’s “Tony Soprano” but unlike Soprano, beat members of his family (and possibly had a few killed). My favourite quote: Wim even appeared on “College Tour”, a popular Dutch television show that featured interviews with such notable figures as Bill Gates and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The press took to describing Wim as a “knuffel-crimineel”, or “huggable criminal”.

The Avenger: The brother of a man killed in the Lockerbie Bombing spends 25 years attempting to identify the perpetrators of the tragedy. It is the story of obsession. But at the last moment, he has an epiphany—if he continues to follow this obsession, he could easily lose his life. And so he stops, but turns the information he has discovered over to U.S. Department of Justice. My favourite quote: ”At first, I thought they were just another TV crew coming to do a quick story,” Ali Zway told me. “I didn’t understand the obsession until later.”

The Empire of Edge: A story of insider trading. One of the perpetrators get jail time, but the main culprit was never seriously punished. Two favourite quotes in this one: Cohen was never a “value investor”—someone who makes sustained commitments to companies that he believes in. He moved in and out of stocks quickly, making big bets on short-term fluctuations in their price. “Steve has no emotion in this stuff”, one of his portfolio managers said in a disposition last year. “Stocks mean nothing to him. They’re just ideas.” And the ending: Steve Cohen settled the SEC’s civil case against him in 2016; he was barred from investing outside money, but only until 2018. He remains one of the richest people on Wall Street. In 2020, he bought a controlling interest in the New York Mets.

A Loaded Gun: A 44-year-old woman, a university professor, shoots six people, three of them fatally, because she was going to be denied tenure (which, in university-land, means “You’re fired!”). Was this irrational behaviour due to the fact that she accidentally shot and killed her brother 24 years earlier? She was never charged in that incident because of her mother’s intervention. My favourite quote: ”People kept sweeping her bad behavior under the rug, and now they’re paying a tremendous price.”

The Hunt For El Chapo: The various escapades, escapes, and final capture of El Chapo, the notorious Mexican drug lord. My favourite quote: One by-product of the culture of corruption in Mexico is a reflexive cynicism about any official story put out by the government.

Winning: A profile of Mark Burnett, who created the following reality shows: Survivor, The Apprentice, Shark Tank, and The Voice. (I can proudly say that I never watched a single episode of any of them, or of any reality show for that matter.) In “Winning” Keene concentrates on the relationship between Burnett and Donald Trump, and on how that TV show resurrected Trump’s fame. My favourite quote: But his chief legacy is to have cast a serially bankrupt carnival barker in the role of a man who might plausibly become the leader of the free world.

Swiss Bank Heist: Herve Falciani was a computer technician who copied and subsequently released records from the Swiss Bank HSBC showing how millionaires, billionaires, and drug kingpins hid their money from their countries’ tax authorities. Did he copy these records in order to blackmail the bank, or out of a sense of justice? The article leaves this question unsolved. At any rate, after he was almost caught by the Swiss, he released his records to French authorities. My favourite quotes: There was ample evidence that the global plutocracy has many outlets for dissemination in the realm of personal finance. Plus: Greece had amassed a giant debt, and to reduce it, Papaconstantinou had enacted severe austerity measures, cutting pensions and wages and raising taxes, even though many Greeks were in desperate financial straits. Yet, when Papaconstantinou learned the names of the wealthy Greeks who were hiding their fortunes offshore, the government took no action.

The Prince of Marbella: How the DEA ran an elaborate sting to catch a major arms dealer. My favourite quote: the DEA has an unusually expansive network of agents and informants. Because there is often a nexus between narcotics and arms dealing, terrorism, and other international crimes, the agency’s elite Special Operations Division sometimes undertakes multi-jurisdictional investigations that end up having nothing to do with drugs.

The Worst of the Worst: The lawyer Judy Clarke is dogmatically opposed to the death penalty, to such an extent that she takes on defence cases where there is no question that the accused is guilty of heinous crimes. We were supposed to empathize with Clarke’s driven obsession in this piece. I didn’t. In fact, I disliked her. In Canada , at least, “life imprisonment” does not mean “imprisoned for life”; people guilty of abhorrent crimes—people like Paul Bernardo who murdered and tortured young girls—are released after serving only a portion of their lives in prison. My favourite quote: ”Judy is fascinated by what makes people tick—what drives people to commit these kinds of crimes.”

Buried Secrets: The African country of Guinea has a fortune in iron ore that is difficult to extract and transport to shipping port. In 1997 the rights to develop a large deposit was give to the Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest iron-ore producers. But in 2008, Rio Tinto was stripped of its license, and the rights were given to BSGR, a small company without the expertise needed to mine the ore. BSGR then flipped the contract rights to another company with the needed expertise, earning a large profit in the process. Guinea’s ruling government changed, and the fight against the BSGR contract began. There was evidence of extensive bribery involved in awarding the contract to BSGR. There is evidence that the billionaire owner of BGGR, Beny Steinmetz, has primarily used bribes and other nebulous means to amass his fortune. My favourite quotes: According to Transparency International, Guinea is one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Plus Africa’s resource wealth has bypassed the vast majority of African people and built vast fortunes for a privileged few. Plus The World Bank estimates that 40 percent of the private wealth in Africa is held outside the continent.

Journeyman: A profile of Anthony Bourdaine. I did not know why this piece was included in the book, given that Bourdaine was never involved with any criminal enterprises. He did waste his youth in the drug culture, but managed to escape it and build a notable reputation based on his adventurous culinary undertakings. He was always challenging his own way of life. No quote, because the last sentence is a spoiler, and it is what gives away the reason this piece was included. I read again the book’s title: Rogues: True Stories of Drifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. Bourdaine was a rebel.

Thanks to the Greater Victoria Public Library for providing this ebook copy.

[Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/4 stars

Rogues was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed some of the stories and the rest were either okay, or I wasn’t that interested in the details of the case/story.

To me the most interesting stories were:

Crime Family - How a notorious Dutch gangster was exposed by his own sister.
The Avenger - Has the brother of a victim of the Lockerbie bombing finally solved the case?
The Hunt for El Chapo - Inside the capture of the world’s most notorious drug lord.
Winning - How Mark Burnett resurrected Donald Trump as an icon of American success.
The Worst of the Worst - Judy Clarke excelled at saving the lives of notorious killers. Then she took the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Journeyman - Anthony Bourdain’s movable feast.

I did audio for Rogues with Patrick Radden Keefe narrating his own book.

If I would have read this, the stories that bored me might have worked better by reading it. Maybe the details would have stuck more and I wouldn't have zoned out while listening?

Regardless of that, all the stories are well written and there's great details for the case or subject matter.
Keefe does a great job of investigative journalism, getting the facts down, and talking to many that were involved with the story.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection of twelve previously published essays from the New Yorker on such topics as:
• Vintage wine fraud –apparently there are people selling fakes for thousands of dollars!
• An investigation by a victim’s brother into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103
• A Scandinavian crime family where the kingpin’s sister turns him in and lives in hiding
• The capture of infamous narcotrafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán
• Producer Mark Burnett’s role in burnishing the image of Donald Trump, which paved the way for a presidential campaign
• A defense attorney who represents the “worst of the worst” criminals

I am not a true crime fan, but I found these articles provocative and informative. Patrick Radden Keefe is an author who knows how to tell a true story. It is not quite as compelling as the other two of this author’s books I have read (Say Nothing and Empire of Pain), probably due to my preference for a longer work on a single topic over a series of articles, but definitely worth reading.

[Greekchoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick Radden Keefe does not need my approval, but he has it anyway!

Each essay in this collection centers on a different criminal case, ranging from insider trading to terrorism. I'm not sure anyone will walk away from this book thinking "I really wish there were more pieces about international fraud," but Keefe's skill lies in taking an extremely complicated subject and narrowing it down into something digestible. The essays about Dr. Amy Bishop, Anthony Bourdain, and the death row lawyer Judy Clarke were the most interesting to me, but there's no real weak spots here.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, because it's just a collection of very good New Yorker articles. It's nice to get a book that curates for you: I have access to a New Yorker subscription and absolutely never use it because I don't like wading through the entire thing every week.

I agree with another reviewer that the "rogues" theme doesn't quite work, because I'm not sure what the meaningful connection is between Judy Clarke, Anthony Bourdain, and Monzer al-Kassar. Mostly, it made me wonder how Judy Clarke would defend El Chapo.

Here are some things I learned I do not understand and probably never will:
- The narcotics trade
- Arms dealing
- Witness protection programs
- White collar crime sentencing
- Drug development and drug patents
- Money laundering
- Resource extraction and mining contracts
- Extradition and international jurisdiction
- The mechanics of the stock market
- Offshore banking

My loving husband told me to add "wine" to this list, but I refuse. I know nothing about wine, but apparently neither do highly-paid wine experts - they can never tell real from fake!

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Patrick Radden Keefe. I don't think there is anyone currently doing long form journalism better than him. This is a collection of New Yorker pieces, the most recent about 5-years old, about rogues of different sorts. I feel like he cast too wide a net perhaps. The subjects of several of the stories are really bad people. Hardy Rodenstock and Bill Koch - both terrible and and entertaining people on opposite sides sides of a fascinating con game are great examples. My favorite story was about the certifiably evil Mark Burnett. Keefe lays out a convincing argument that the same man is responsible for reality television and for Donald Trump being president. That is a rogue!

But then there are people in this rogues' gallery who are simply rebels, who are good. Tony Bordain was a difficult man to be sure, but a good man who hurt no one so badly as he hurt himself and who built empathy and understanding. Judy Clarke is a rebel, one who works within the system, who has given her life to death penalty cases -- much of the story about her focuses on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is a a terrible person, but the real subject is the lawyer who kept him alive (and locked up.) Ken Dornstein is not a rogue at all really He is just a man who dedicated himself to making sense of his brother's death at the hands of terrorists. There are many people here who fall in the middle of the good vs. evil spectrum Hervé Falciani who brought down Swiss banking really mostly did it to save his own ass, but he nonetheless stamped out a lot of evil -- I can go either way on him.

Still, all the stories were fascinating and I am not going to knock off a star for a misleading title. This is a great collection to dip in and out of. Keefe is a treasure.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars for Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. By Patrick Radden Keefe read by the author.

This book is made up of 12 articles that appeared in the New Yorker. They are all about people that have taken a different kind path in life. Some of stories are disturbing but they are all well researched and written.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere between 4 - 4.5

If you’ve enjoyed his previous books this is definitely a similar vibe, just in a shorter format — these are 12 articles previously published in The New Yorker on various personalities, most with a criminal connection (I loved the one on Bourdain but not sure what that was doing here). Recommended!

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of two halves for me. Half were really interesting, but half I already knew a great deal about - and I learned more unpleasant facts about Trump that I could have easily lived without knowing...

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was interested in the subject matter (I found out about myself that I am very interested in economic crimes), I adored this. Sadly, I wasn't always interested in the subject matter and dnfed a few of the articles. But there's no denying that Patrick Radden Keefe is insanely talented.

[Jill S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes one just needs to spend 15 hours with Patrick Radden Keefe reading to them.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

A collection of articles written over the years by Patrick Radden Keefe. So many interesting characters, I found the one about Bourdain to be my favorite.

[Johann (jobis89) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This further solidifies PRK as one of my favourites. He can make any topic incredibly compelling!

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I meant to read this from when I first heard it. I had already read a few of his long form articles in the New Yorker, I particularly remembered the Amy Bishop one (reprinted here) and the famous one on the Sackler family The Family That Built an Empire of Pain, which gave origin to Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (and cost the Sacklers many billions and embarrassment all round. I think that would not have happened without the book and without the article). That last one is not reprinted here, but I do recommend it . Patrick Radden Keefe is a genius of writing journalism at this length, the research, the presentation, the clarity, the way his insight is delicately presented without intruding... This particularly volume reprints some 12-ish New Yorker pieces, written some 10-15 years apart. Some feel, and this is inherent to journalism a bit out of its time and the recap done soon afterward (El Chapo escaped and was recaptured and escaped. Anthony Bourdain commited suicide) feels, from a literary viewpoint insufficient, without that context that it was written then. To a now reader reading several stories in a row, set in different years, but still soon in the aftermatch of some of those stories, the timing can be somewhat vertiginous.

The stories are uneven, some drier, others juicier somehow. Subjective, some are more interesting, to me, than others, but I expect which are which will depend on the reader.. I am giving this 4 stars (though it is totally recommended to any students of journalism, or fans of true crime, and a lot of the pieces are absolutely recommended to everybody) perhaps because it does feel uneven somewhat. It is a pity also the stories which gave origin to Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland were not reprinted, but I guess they could not be, without affecting the copyrights of those books. I am going to keep being interested in reading anything he writes no matter the topic.

Patrick Radden Keefe is also a very competent, enjoyable narrator. The very first story, about fake wine, is a joy to hear, so vivacious, but a few other stories are narrated somewhat more drily. It might be just my own ear, but I thought there was something odd with the speed of the stories, some felt artificially slowed. I am crazily picky about the speed at which i hear audiobooks, often my speed is 1.15-1.20 but I adjust up or down according to the specific book, and within this book, with the same narrator all round, some stories I had to speed up, they felt artificially paused at the length which seemed fine for other stories.

And again, it reinforced something I have learnt about myself, for me to process things, make decisions, understand deeply details, audio only does not work. I process data much better visually than by hearing it. I just went along with the narration a few times, counting on things being summarized later, but just hearing complex details does not lead to me processing them the same way as if I was looking at them written down in a page. My academic training was in STEM and a lot of it was juggling formulas, maybe that was it, my brain is trained that way...