Patrick Radden Keefe, SAY NOTHING: A TRUE STORY OF MURDER AND MEMORY IN NORTHERN IRELAND

This was a knockout of a book, a non-fiction with enough elements of a mystery novel that I kept reading well past bedtime. 

I knew very little about the Irish Troubles, and that complicated history, full of betrayals and double agents and factions, could have been frustratingly bewildering. What I appreciated was the way Keefe organized the book around a central crime--the abduction and murder by the IRA of a supposed "informer" named Jean McConville--that involved a variety of actors, for Keefe then threaded their stories/biographies along the main one. Managing multiple subplots is not easy to do, but this was done deftly, in a way that made the material accessible. I also appreciated the historical context Keefe sketches ... dating all the way back to the Norman raiders of the 12thC and, in the 16thC, Henry VIII and the Catholic/Protestant divide. I also appreciated the quality of the writing, which was spare and elegant and forthright. 

This book was one selected by the Arizona Literary Society, which is how  found it; it was also chosen as one of the 10 best books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review. Highly recommend for anyone who likes readable, deeply researched history.