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

As Keefe notes in his acknowledgments, he originally intended to practice law until an offer from The New Yorker led him to pursue his dream of writing for magazines. Rogues represents and expands on this work, and the themes explored in the book are persistent interests for Keefe. In particular, Keefe is fascinated by who becomes notable, and how stories are told “Journeyman” for example, is not his only piece about a chef as a cultural icon and political figure: A May 2022 article features chef Jose Andres, whose World Central Kitchen operates in conflict zones, most recently in Ukraine. Like Bourdain, Andres finds himself the subject of attention in a new medium: the director Ron Howard is working on a documentary about him. 

Keefe is also perennially interested in crime, corruption, and the relationship between businessmen and politics. Keefe began covering the administration of US President Donald Trump for The New Yorker in 2017, with a piece on advisor Carl Icahn. He followed this up with a profile of then-National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, investigating the possibility that McMaster believed he was saving the US from Trump by serving in his role. More recently, Keefe has profiled Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who now owns the Chelsea Football Club. London has become a haven for money laundering and putting personal fortunes to illicit uses, like the Swiss banks Keefe describes in his piece on Hervé Falciani. Keefe describes how the oligarchs use British libel law to prevent investigation into and disclosure of their activities, similar to the way Chapo Guzmán and Wim Holleeder used police corruption to accomplish their goals.

While Keefe’s 2021 book Empire of Pain began as a series of New Yorker articles about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis, the book also has some thematic overlaps with Keefe’s piece on Matthew Martoma, Dr. Sidney Gilman, and the world of high-stakes stock trading. By consulting for Martoma, Gilman was part of a trend of physicians collaborating with the financial sector. In Empire of Pain, Keefe finds that the connections between business and medicine can be traced back to Arthur Sackler, the founder of a pharmaceutical dynasty, and continued by his descendants as they made millions from opioids while concealing the addictive nature of OxyContin from the FDA and the wider public for as long as possible. Similarly, Keefe’s Say Nothing was preceded by New Yorker pieces on the IRA and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. The book’s focus on a past murder for its relevance to the present reflects Keefe’s interest in stories that remain hidden, the public narratives that are told in their place, and the investigative effort to find a more durable and less politicized truth. Keefe interviews the children of Jean McConville, whose mother was murdered in an act of political violence. Jean’s son, Michael, insists that Belfast is his home, and has refused all offers to leave. Their story has some overlap with Astrid Holleeder’s: Both are marked by violence and loss, though the political significance of McConville’s murder has reverberated for a longer period.

Contextualizing Keefe’s body of work makes clear that the themes and motifs in Rogue reflect his long-term intellectual and authorial commitments. Keefe himself has recently been profiled in the magazine ProPublica, where the interview focuses on Keefe’s longtime fascination with secrecy, self-delusion, and his search for gripping opening anecdotes.