Guzmán hid in the mountains, but he liked to dance, he liked good food, and he liked the company of women, often professional ones, which meant he had to come to town now and again. Guzmán worked his way up from apprentice in the Sinaloa Cartel and proved himself to be a bit of a Houdini, escaping from Puente Grande Prison in Jalisco in 2001, although criminal charges were brought against seventy-one people who worked at the facility, including the warden, so some money may have changed hands. The original article, ‘The Hunt For El Chapo’ – published 2015 - is included and it’s little wonder that many narcocorridos or narco ballads are sung in Mexico about the story because it has enough twists and turns to make most of Hollywood’s output look like a half-arsed school play. Keefe did think about it, although not one suspects for long, but decided to decline as “the whole scenario felt a bit like Act I of a thriller in which the hapless magazine writer, blinded by his desire for a scoop, does not necessarily survive Act III.”

He hummed and hawed but he did call him back, despite his fear that revelations such as El Chapo’s vigorous Viagra use might have offended El Señor, only to be offered the opportunity to write the kingpin’s memoirs. In the preface we hear how a lawyer for the Guzmán family – the family of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, the notorious Mexican drug lord – left a voice mail in the office for Keefe. While those two articles are not included in Rogues, a collection of his work for that august publication where Keefe has worked since 2006, the ones that are speak to both his enviable writing skills and his nose for a fascinating story.Įven his subjects, although few come out smelling of roses, can’t help but admire the man’s acumen. Indeed, Empire of Pain was an extension of a 2017 article “The Family That Built An Empire Of Pain”, originally published in The New Yorker, and “Where The Bodies Are Buried”, from the same magazine two years earlier, begins with McConville’s story.

While he might be slightly better known in these parts for books like Say Nothing, which used the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville as a foundation on which to build an examination, told from both sides, of the troubles in Northern Ireland, or Empire Of Pain, the shocking story of the Sackler family and their part in the Ox圜ontin problem in America, the brilliant Patrick Radden Keefe has been gripping readers with his investigative journalism for years.

Rogues true stories of grifters