Book review: Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe

I reviewed New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing, A True Story of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland, for NPR. Say Nothing is the story of the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a 38-year-old mother of 10, who was taken from her home in Belfast by masked members of the Provisional IRA, one night in 1972.

Say Nothing switches back and forth between the mystery of who killed Jean McConville and the wider history of the Troubles. As a historian, there’s no mistaking his bias: Keefe is contemptuous of the British government and the security services, and he venerates the Provisional IRA. As the narrator of a whodunit, however, he excels, exposing the past, layer by layer, like the slow peel of a rotten onion, as he works to answer a question that the British government, the Northern Irish police and the McConville family has been seeking the answer to for nearly 50 years.

Read more here.