Author Patrick Radden Keefe will focus on “people behaving very badly” in his next book.
Keefe announced on Twitter that Doubleday will publish his Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks next year. The Penguin Random House imprint describes the book as “twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue by one of the most decorated journalists of our time.”
“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,” Doubleday says.
Keefe’s 2019 book, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, was one of the most acclaimed nonfiction books of that year; it was a Kirkus Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest book, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, was published in April.
In the preface to Rogues, Keefe says the stories, all originally published in the New Yorker, “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.”
Rogues is slated for publication on June 28, 2022.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
