Read for my book club. I almost always finish a book I've started but this was so disappointing and since the chapters didn't relate to one another, after a hundred pages or so, I had no investment in it and did not bother to finish it.

So many things turned me off. The chapters did not tell stories in a coherent way. For example, the Swiss banker traipsed confusingly around the country and never seemed to be clear whether he was truly bad or incompetently good. Article could have made the point - instead it just wandered.

The wine chapter was a similar mess. It's hard to have interest in people buying priceless (or fraudulent) bottles of wine that I don't drink nor can I savor by rhetoric. This was the opening chapter in the book - you'd think it would have been the strongest. If it was, that was a bad omen for others. I persevered for a few more chapters.

Some stories I already knew. For example, Trump's rise to his candidacy has been told many times. I didn't need to read it again and skipped it. In contrast, I had never read Bourdain's books so figured I'd learn something about him. It was some bright moments but how did it get into the book in the first place? Bourdain hardly measured up to the subtitle's promise ("True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks") since Bourdain was none of them. But what I found particularly annoying was the chapter ended with one sentence about him ending his life - no explanation why even though I had just finished reading pages and pages of how he worked and what he obsessed about. Yeah, I get the chapter was originally published when Bourdain was still alive but the book is new. He couldn't update the material?

In summary, the book was an obvious attempt to do as little work as possible using repurposed articles that had already their day. And even then, the writing style was lacking coherency. The author would throw out tons of facts, much of which were largely irrelevant, sometimes adding his own opinions, and burying the lede - obviously intentionally - otherwise, these stories could have been much shorter.

Yes, I get that he had put a lot of work into the long-form articles earlier and it's nice to give them a 2nd life. That just wasn't enough to justify this book. He should have been more selective or revised, slimmed down, and rewrote much of the material.

Of the 5 people who attended our book club for this book, 4 (including me) disliked the book and the remaining person liked it but admitted that she knew the author personally as a childhood friend so that likely biased her opinion. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyable and well researched book. ( )

Patrick Radden Keefe (The New Yorker) is a master of long form journalism. Most of these true stories were fascinating. They definitely show that truth is stranger than fiction. Very easy reading as you can dip into medium length stories. ( )

I really love Patrick Radden Keefe, but thought this collection was uneven. Rogues would've benefited by being literally cut in half, only including The Jefferson Bottles, The Avenger, A Loaded Gun, The Hunt for El Chapo, The Worst of the Worst, and Journeyman.

Also, fuck Steven Cohen. ( )

This is a collection of articles that Keefe previously published in the New Yorker. Each of the articles is interesting and worth the read, but I was not happy with the title of this book. "Rogue" is a pretty mild term for a Mexican drug runner, a homicidal Dutch gangster, an unscrupulous arms dealer, and some of the other people profiled in this book. On the other hand, you really have to wonder what TV chef Anthony Bourdain is doing in this company, not to mention Judy Clarke, the attorney who defended the Boston bomber. While her client was a mass killer, the article is about her, not him.

I guess what I am saying is that this book should have been better edited so that the collection made more sense, and that its theme should have been more accurately entitled. Apart from that, it was a very good read. ( )