Editors Reads Verdict
Keefe is the best long-form journalist working today, and this collection demonstrates why — each piece is meticulously reported, beautifully structured, and asks large questions through small, particular lives.
What We Loved
- Every piece is excellent — this is not a collection with filler
- Keefe's ability to earn trust from difficult subjects and translate their inner lives to the page is unmatched
- The range of subjects — fraud, drugs, whistleblowing, private investigation — is unified by moral intelligence
Minor Drawbacks
- Readers who have already read these pieces in The New Yorker will find little new material
- The collection format means the individual pieces don't build on each other the way a book-length narrative would
Key Takeaways
- → People who operate outside the law are not simply different from law-abiding citizens — the distance between them is often smaller and more contingent than we'd prefer to believe
- → Institutions designed to prevent wrongdoing often protect their own interests at the expense of their stated purposes
- → The most interesting people are often those who want things with an intensity that exceeds what conventional paths can provide
| Author | Patrick Radden Keefe |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Pages | 384 |
| Published | October 4, 2022 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-Fiction, True Crime, Journalism |
Rogues Review
Patrick Radden Keefe is the finest practitioner of the long-form magazine profile currently working, and Rogues is the evidence. The book gathers twelve pieces from The New Yorker, most of them running 8,000 to 15,000 words, and even in this concentrated form the quality is consistently extraordinary.
The subjects range widely: Rudy Kurniawan, who perpetrated perhaps the most audacious wine fraud in history by making new wine taste like old and fooling the world’s most sophisticated palates; Sinaloa Cartel hitwoman Josefina Reyes; the family that started the opioid crisis (a preview of material that became Empire of Pain); a Scottish private investigator; Anthony Bourdain. What unifies them is Keefe’s interest in people who want things with an intensity that the conventional world cannot accommodate, and who have found ways around the conventional world’s constraints.
The craft on display is worth examining as much as the content. Keefe has an extraordinary ability to get difficult subjects to talk — to be in the room with people who have every reason to remain silent, and to emerge with material that illuminates their interior lives. His profiles are structured not chronologically but with a novelist’s sense of what information the reader needs to understand a revelation and when. And his moral intelligence — the ability to be interested in rather than merely judgmental of people whose actions were harmful — is what makes the pieces feel humane rather than exploitative.
The best piece in the collection is probably the Kurniawan profile, which manages to be simultaneously a fascinating account of the wine world’s vulnerabilities and a portrait of a man whose desire to belong to a world that excluded him produced both his fraud and his charm. It is the kind of journalism that makes you rethink your assumptions about the differences between criminals and everyone else.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks" about?
A collection of long-form journalism from The New Yorker, profiling extraordinary people who exist outside or at the edges of the law — a wine fraud artist, a drug lord's hitwoman, a whistleblower, a private investigator, a con artist. Keefe's best magazine work gathered in a single essential volume.
What are the key takeaways from "Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks"?
People who operate outside the law are not simply different from law-abiding citizens — the distance between them is often smaller and more contingent than we'd prefer to believe Institutions designed to prevent wrongdoing often protect their own interests at the expense of their stated purposes The most interesting people are often those who want things with an intensity that exceeds what conventional paths can provide
Is "Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks" worth reading?
Keefe is the best long-form journalist working today, and this collection demonstrates why — each piece is meticulously reported, beautifully structured, and asks large questions through small, particular lives.
Ready to Read Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks?
Check the current price on Amazon.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Prices and availability are subject to change. See Amazon for current price.
Review last updated: