Rogues, Patrick Keefe

Stories written by the writer in The New Yorker of over a dozen years that dive into the world of crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, bonds from family, the power of denial, the love and betrayal within all of us deeming circumstances of formidable challenges. You could tell in his words these were stories that pulled him into the writing of the complexity of the characters or the intrigue of the events. There are certain themes that kept popping up… notorious prisoners from different articles held in the same supermax prison; an arms trafficker involved in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, while in another story the older brother of a victim on the plane spends a quarter of a century trying to solve. I skipped two of them because the outrageous and generally demeaning character flaws of the character just upset me to the point that I no longer wanted to know anything about that person. Their crime was an indication of their body of work in life, and knowing their story would not have any long-lasting positive effects on my life. Knowledge no good for our fellow humans.