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Biography
American

Patrick Radden Keefe

1976

The most acclaimed investigative journalist writing long-form narrative nonfiction today, Patrick Radden Keefe writes about crime, corruption, and injustice with the narrative authority of a novelist and the moral clarity of a prosecutor. Say Nothing (2019) — about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the disappearance of Jean McConville — won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Orwell Prize. Empire of Pain (2021) — about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis — was a devastating indictment that helped reshape public understanding of the pharmaceutical industry.

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PeriodContemporary
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Patrick Radden Keefe (b. 1976) was born on 22 September 1976. He studied history at Columbia University and law at Yale Law School, and holds a master’s from the London School of Economics. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his investigative pieces have won the National Magazine Award.

Life and Career

Chatter (2005) — about government surveillance and intelligence — and The Snakehead (2009) — about a Chinese human smuggler — were his early books. They established his method: deep archival research combined with human sources, structured as narratives with the pacing of thrillers.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2019) was the breakthrough — a book about the Troubles told through the stories of Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams, and Jean McConville, the widowed mother of ten who was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1972. The book’s achievement is its ability to hold multiple perspectives — republican, loyalist, victim — without losing its moral centre. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orwell Prize, and was adapted as a critically acclaimed FX/Hulu limited series (2024).

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021) — about the Sackler family’s role in creating the opioid crisis through the marketing of OxyContin — was a publishing event. It documented how a single family’s greed caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and how the Sacklers used philanthropy to launder their reputation. The book won the Baillie Gifford Prize.

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (2022) collected his finest New Yorker pieces.

Major Works and Themes

Keefe writes about the intersection of crime and power — how institutions, families, and states commit acts of extraordinary violence and then construct narratives to conceal them.

Key Works

  • Say Nothing (2019)
  • Empire of Pain (2021)
  • Rogues (2022)

Collecting Keefe

Say Nothing (2019, Doubleday) brings $30–$80.

Empire of Pain (2021, Doubleday) brings $20–$60. Keefe signs at events and festivals.