Patrick Radden Keefe: How to Tell a Story

The New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe on his approach to reporting. What draws him to figures from the criminal underworld? How do you write journalistic true-crime stories without slipping into sensationalism? And how does he recognize a great story in the first place?

Few nonfiction writers have attained such stature that they appear as themselves in the HBO series Industry and serve as the face of a fashion brand. Patrick Radden Keefe is one of them. Keefe previously wrote groundbreaking accounts of the Sackler family, whose pharmaceutical empire made thousands of Americans addicted to prescription painkillers, as well as exposés of the Mafia underworld in New York’s Chinatown. In his reporting for The New Yorker, Keefe has profiled figures such as drug kingpin El Chapo and Dutch crime boss Willem Holleeder. His research is so meticulous that he solved the murder of Jean McConville, a woman who was kidnapped and killed during the ‘Troubles’ in Ireland.

Patrick Radden Keefe weaves together deeply personal, often true-crime stories with broader social and political developments, using them to offer a diagnose of our times. A compelling example is his most recent book, London Falling. Following the mysterious death of a British teenager, it emerges that the boy had been leading a double life, posing as the heir to a Russian oligarch. Behind this personal tragedy lies a larger story: how London welcomed Russian billionaires with open arms, fundamentally reshaping the city and transforming it into what became known as ‘Londongrad.’

We’ll talk with Keefe about his approach to reporting. What draws him to figures from the criminal underworld? How do you write journalistic true-crime stories without slipping into sensationalism? And how does he recognize a great story in the first place?