ROGUES: TRUE STORIES OF GRIFTERS, KILLER, REBELS AND CROOKS
Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
Publisher: Picador
I previously wrote a review for Patrick Radden Keefe’s book, Empire of Pain, about the Sakler family’s contribution to the opioid addiction.
I liked that book and commended the author on the vast amounts of research it contained.
Rogues is different.
It is still well-researched but instead of a book it is a compilation of articles that he has written for The New Yorker magazine over the past dozen years.
Keefe tells us that he first fell for magazines in the late 1980’s while still in junior high.
Back when a magazine was, “the physical thing, these bright bundles of stapled paper – were obiquitous and felt as if they would be around forever.”
He dreamed of the day he could write for The New Yorker, and his dream came true in 2006 when they published one of his freelance articles.
Keefe tends to, “pursue stories that pull me in for one reason or another, because of the complexity of the character or the intrigue of events.”
The first article is about a counterfeit wine bottle.
Turns out people will spend a lot of money on wine, in this particular case a bottle of “Lafitte (which is now spelled “Lafite”)”, with the letters “Th.J”.
Those initials mean the bottle probably belonged to Thomas Jefferson, making it the “world’s greatest rarities.”
The wine expert at Christie’s verified this.
Christopher Forbes brought the bottle for £105,000.
This caused a flurry of people seeking out this rarest of wines.
And questions about how there could be so much rare wine.
Then there is a chapter about a Dutch gangster and the pain and trauma he has caused his family.
Next is about a mass shooting … it is the States, so of course.
However, the shooter was a middle-aged neurobiologist, named Amy Bishop, which made this case very unusual.
Did the actions of Amy’s parents, years ago, set her on this course?
After writing the article about El Chapo, Keefe got a phone call from El Chapo’s lawyer.
Ut oh, what could that mean?
It turns out El Chapo wanted Keefe to write his memoirs.
Keefe declined.
And if you want to get really annoyed, the article about Mark Burnett will do it.
Seems that we have Mark Burnett to blame for Trump’s ascendancy.
Mark portrayed Trump, “as an icon of American success”, to prop up the ratings of his show The Apprentice.
People bought the hype.
Keefe explains in the preface, that after he wrote the article about Mark Burnett, “he wouldn’t speak to me – but he had two ex-wives who did, and in the end, I think I learned more from Burdett from speaking to them than would have from Burnett himself.”
Other articles include a lawyer who defends, “the worst of the worst”, a brother that is looking for the answers to the bombing of Pan Am 103 and a computer hacker who uncovered the secrets of HSBC’s money laundering and Swiss Bank’s and tax evasion tactics.
The last article is about Anthony Bourdain, written in 2017, a year before his death.
There are a great mix of characters and the articles are entertaining, illuminating and at times frustrating but ohhh so interesting.
Keefe says, “These are wild tales, but they’re all true, each scrupulously fact-checked by my brilliant colleagues at The New Yorker.”
I say they these tales are great reading – and that I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Kim Reardon
The Reluctant Book Critic