Patrick Radden Keefe On The Art Of Investigative Journalism

In Say Nothing – Dua’s Monthly Read for June – Patrick Radden Keefe delves into the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Beginning with the 1972 disappearance of 38-year-old Jean McConville, he uses her story to explore the impact of the Troubles upon ordinary people. In this essay, Radden Keefe shares his journey into becoming an investigative journalist which led him to uncover the story behind Say Nothing

Growing up, I was addicted to detective stories. I spent childhood summers lazing around reading old Agatha Christie paperbacks about murders at English country homes. In high school, I graduated to hard-boiled fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M Cain. There was something comforting for me about watching a brilliant investigator solve a complicated crime. But if I’m being honest, the other thing that attracted me to this genre was the way in which it brought you face-to-face with human darkness. There was something both thrilling and unsettling about close encounters with people who do the worst things imaginable. As a teenager, I thought I might like to grow up to write crime fiction. Instead, I became an investigative journalist.

You never know where you will stumble on the sort of inspiration that might change the course of your life. One day in my high school library, I picked up a copy of The New Yorker magazine and felt as if I’d discovered a whole new literary genre. These days we would call it ‘long-form’, though that term wasn’t in use back then. Truman Capote, who first published his classic crime story In Cold Blood in The New Yorker, called it the ‘non-fiction novel’: a gripping narrative, with characters and rich themes and astonishing plot twists and all the ingredients of excellent fiction – except that it happens to be true.

Part of my job is going out into the world and interviewing all sorts of people: artists, hackers, conmen, chefs, IRA paramilitaries, academics, spies, murderers, politicians, executives, drug runners, cops, you name it. After I published a big story about the Sinaloa drug cartel, Chapo Guzman asked if I might like to ghost-write his memoir (I politely declined). When I sit down to write, the trick is to distil all that research into a story that feels tight and propulsive. I have no interest in producing writing that feels like homework. You’ve got other things you could be doing and a thousand demands on your time. If I want your attention, I need to earn it on the page.

When I go out looking for a good story, I almost never find one. Instead, the really good ones tend to fall in my lap. In 2013 I was reading the New York Times and came across an obituary for the first woman to join the IRA as a frontline soldier — Dolours Price. I was fascinated by Dolours, and what her life could teach us about the romance and the costs of radical politics. Five years and seven trips to Northern Ireland later, I published Say Nothing.

This fall, Hulu and Disney+ will release a nine-part dramatic series based on the book. It’s been fascinating for me to help produce the show and guide the process of transitioning this story to the screen. Like the books I read growing up, it’s a mystery. But the story is true, and I think it resonates with the moment we’re in. I hope it has an impact.