In 2018 the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, a writer at the New Yorker who is particularly adept at using true crime as a vehicle for probing intellectual questions, published Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. The book looked at the ripple effects of a notorious, decades-old crime: the 1972 abduction and “disappearance” of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 who local IRA guerrillas believed, perhaps wrongly, to be a British informant at the height of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. 

This was a 560-page nonfiction book about a faraway conflict that few Americans had thought about in a long time. Although not without critics, it was also grippingly written, rigorously reported, and even uncovered the possible identity of the person who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the tragic McConville. The book became a sensation and a surprise bestseller. Now Hulu, Disney+, and FX have co-produced a dramatic nine-part miniseries adaptation, created by Josh Zetumer and with the involvement of Keefe. I’m happy to say that it mostly does Keefe’s book justice.