“High-speed accidents, crooked lawyers, and poor people desperate for cash—it was the kind of scheme that could have been cooked up only in the Big Easy.”
patrick radden keefe
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Patrick Radden Keefe
The New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book London Falling on running, writing in the morning, a life-changing childhood trip, and more.
Posted inFeature
Best of 2024: The Most Popular Editors’ Picks of the Year
Our readership has spoken! This list compiles the most-viewed stories we recommended in 2024.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
We’re showcasing work by Patrick Radden Keefe, Ashlee Vance and Ellen Huet, Elizabeth Rush, Jonathon Keats, and Indrani Sen.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld
“After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice
“For decades, Scott Frank earned up to three hundred thousand dollars a week rewriting other people’s screenplays. Finally, he decided to stop playing ventriloquist.”
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Wright Thompson, Mitch Moxley, Patrick Radden Keefe, Joshua Sokol, and Ariane Todes.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The World’s Most Notorious Drug Trafficker Breaks Out of Prison (Again)
Drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as “El Chapo,” escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico this weekend. It’s his second prison escape. “Anyone who makes a mile-long tunnel from his cell and escapes on a motorcycle is necessarily in collusion with the government,” a government official told Patrick Radden Keefe in his New Yorker […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Making Marijuana Legal Might Not Save Police Money
“When legal marijuana goes on sale, sometime next spring, the black market will not simply vanish; over-the-counter pot will have to compete with illicit pot. To support the legal market, Kleiman argued, the state must intensify law-enforcement pressure on people who refuse to play by the new rules. A street dealer will have to be […]