Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Keefe reconstructs the disappearance of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of ten dragged from her home by the IRA in 1972, and through her story maps the whole arc of the Troubles. The reporting is devastating. The book asks who should be held accountable for a shared history of violence when everyone agreed to say nothing.
Keefe's sourcing tilts republican: the Boston College tapes hand him Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes in their own voices, while loyalist violence and British collusion stay at the margins of the frame. The closing identification of who shot Jean McConville rests on inference presented with thriller certainty. Superb reporting, but the pacing flatters one side's story arc.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
