Book review | Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

Patrick Radden Keefe is riding high following the success of Empire of Pain, his award-winning investigation into the Sackler family’s opioid villainy. It’s no wonder that his publishers got this book out fast to ride the wave.

It’s a riveting collection of portraits he’s written for The New Yorker. Long-form journalism is shrinking rapidly, but the magazine proudly carries on the tradition of lengthy, in-depth, and authoritative pieces. Here, in these pages, are a German finewine fraudster who replicated centuries-old bottles of wine in his basement and fooled the world’s most sophisticated “noses”; the Mexican drug kingpin El Chapo, a master of escape with seemingly nine lives; and a former croupier who lifted data from a venerable Swiss bank and blew the whistle on clients who used the secretive banking laws to evade taxes and launder money.

The author trails after a troubled and brilliant Anthony Bourdain before he takes his life, and meets famed defence lawyer Judy Clarke, who takes on the cases of the most monstrous killers — until she meets her match in the Boston Marathon murderer, still on death row. The stories are meticulously reported and penetrating in their insight. (Picador)