... absorbing ... is mainly about these women’s stories, and the dueling efforts to suppress them and to bring them to light, though Farrow knows how to leaven the narrative, slipping in scenes of the occasional domestic squabble between him and his partner, the former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, as well as offering some necessary comic relief. Farrow can be disarmingly wry, even when writing about another shadowy psyops firm spying on him and other journalists ... there are some hopeful threads, too.
... unfolds like a classic noir. He opens on a suspicious conversation between a pair of criminals, and then whisks the reader into his own world as it was then — surprisingly bleak, and mottled with disappointment ... Journalism like Farrow’s — fearless, exhaustive, even reckless in its disregard for personal or professional consequences — is the only way to begin to correct this problem...Farrow might be able to restore some faith in journalism, but restoring trust in the wide range of institutions implicated in these heinous scandals lies beyond the reach of a single book. But he does what he can — he bears witness, and offers a harrowing portrait of sin and depravity in the bleak tones they merit. If there is any lesson in noir, it’s that the darkness is always all around you.
Farrow...prove[s] that money and power really do run the world. It’s a chilling revelation that further explains why even the most successful and influential of Weinstein’s victims could be silenced: The Hollywood super-producer had more than his own considerable resources at his disposal ... The reader comes away with the understanding that when a person speaks out, she faces not just men like Weinstein, but also a larger network that uses the same weapons to silence, intimidate and shame ... What sets Farrow apart is his proximity to those in power...He’s both a dogged reporter and an insider who can offer a glimpse into the halls of power ... o Farrow’s credit, he uses his privilege to elevate the voices of survivors ... Farrow understands that it’s important to remember who these stories are really about: the women who have risked everything to speak truth to power ... The connections between presidents, media moguls and spies described in Catch and Kill are stranger than fiction. As a novel, it would be a page-turner. As a reported piece of nonfiction, it’s terrifying.
The year’s best spy thriller is stranger — and more horrifying — than fiction ... [Farrow] weaves a breathless narrative as compelling as it is disturbing ... rather bracingly exposes the rot that’s persisted across elite American institutions for decades.
Nevils’ allegations are lengthy, graphic and on-the-record in Catch and Kill. Her account underscores the pain, damage and, in Farrow’s telling, the complexity of sexual assault ... deeply reported ... perhaps Farrow’s greatest success was to listen, believe and act, even at his own peril. Because just listening is not enough.
Catch and Kill is a mythic narrative and moral allegory in the form of a thriller; it’s David and Goliath by way of All the President’s Men. It’s a story of spooks and creeps and bullies, of false identities and secret meetings. And it’s always raining ... Shady characters are hardly limited to the Weinstein machine; cloaks and daggers abound in the executive suites of NBC ... Catch and Kill aspires to go beyond the Weinstein story and examine the systems that shield the powerful from scrutiny, yet it’s strikingly lacking in background and analysis on a range of relevant subjects ... It might have dealt, even briefly, with the cultural and legal history of sexual harassment in the workplace; with distinctions between employees and nonemployees; with the not wholly diabolical use of secret payments as a method of resolving misconduct claims; or with the enforceability of nondisclosure agreements if the precipitating conduct is illegal or if the terms and conditions are unconscionable ... The book consistently fails to describe degrees of participation and culpability with precision. How did people become members of Weinstein’s team or gears in his machine? How did they stand to profit? Who was a pawn, a mercenary, a hypocrite, an accomplice? These are not distinctions without a difference: they would help to define the kinds of enablement and complicity that allow powerful, wealthy abusers to operate as they do, and how we might apportion blame.
Mr. Farrow injects powerful moments of human empathy and humor in the book that leave readers with feelings of hope and awe at his dedication to exposing the truth and with the brave sources who enabled him to do so ... It’s a fresh version of a story about journalism, and that’s what makes it so compelling and almost impossible to put down. Not to mention, Mr. Farrow’s writing makes the nonfiction book feel like it could be a best selling thriller, making it all all the more compelling.
... a measured but damning portrait of that failure at NBC, which [Farrow] ties to a pattern of harassment and abuse within the network ... creates a stark contrast with She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. They should be read together in college journalism courses, not only as stunning accounts of what good investigative journalism does but also as how institutions can find strength in legacy, reputation and numbers or use their substantial power to diffuse guilt and protect the powerful ... Farrow is cutting about the avoidant and cryptic language NBC executives used to dodge responsibility ... For all its horrors, Catch and Kill is often sweetly funny.
... [a] page-and-stomach-turning account ... If you followed Farrow’s reporting and other media accounts, some of the revelations in Catch and Kill will seem familiar ... But Farrow’s book – as riveting as any spy thriller and, according to Farrow, rigorously fact-checked – puts these puzzle pieces together, illuminating a web of complicity among the connected, powerful and guilty that would put a typical paranoid fantasy to shame ... is, in many ways, horrifyingly grim – a nightmare confirmation of the worst in human nature and the entangled upper echelons of the media and political worlds. But, as Farrow has noted in interviews, it also admits some rays of hope.
Ronan Farrow’s extraordinary Catch and Kill, in which he masterfully tells the story of his quest to reveal Weinstein’s repugnant activities to the world, doesn’t merely answer these questions. It makes them come to seem complacent, even profoundly stupid. Several times while reading it, I had the sense that, having been blind, I could now see – and for miles, too ... Farrow’s narrative has the pace of a thriller. Were it really a thriller, however, the collusion at its heart would be too much: you would dismiss it as airport pulp. Here is a conspiracy so deeply embedded and far-reaching that even as I write, those alleged to be involved not only remain in their jobs; in recent days, they have pugnaciously denied all wrongdoing in the matter of the reporting of Weinstein’s behaviour ... If Farrow is in possession of an abundance of empathy – Weinstein’s victims trust him and rightly so – he also has an ear for dialogue and a taste for drama. There is something amusingly self-conscious about the way, at one point, he places evidence in a safety deposit box. He’s not being histrionic ... captures the terror and paranoia that eat away at Weinstein’s victims for the simple reason that he comes to experience them himself, a human mirror.
... so valuable ... a terrible story of abject malevolence, betrayal, predation, and — to be extremely generous toward NBC, where Farrow once worked — corporate cowardice, but it's also a propulsive, cinematic page-turner ... That may sound like inappropriate, even grotesque, praise. But consider how the 'too far?' backlash to Me Too manifested almost immediately; the tenacity with which power will protect itself has been evident from the start ... A compelling book that readers can't help but want to finish can make an impact, changing hearts and minds by holding scattered collective attention long enough for an understanding of the injustice to truly take root ... Should it matter that ex-Mossad agents working on behalf of a Hollywood mogul lend Catch and Kill a layer of spy-novel intrigue? No, but I suspect it might help spread the book's lessons farther and wider than it might without them ... the dose of 'holy shit, no, this story is wild' that Catch and Kill serves can go a long way toward ensuring that Farrow's exposé of how that system works, in all of its damning specificity, will continue to have legs ... Farrow seems keen to keep the focus on the stories of the women who came forward at great personal and professional risk, not on him and his writing ... underscores how much harder it is for women to tell their own stories and be heard ... Farrow balances that moral clarity and his painstaking detailing of his reporting process with vivid prose, wry self-awareness, and an eye for the ominous detail to craft an undeniable page-turner, written in such a way to make a reader want to push on to the next chapter immediately to find out what happens next — even those who could by now, two years' worth of follow-up news cycles later, recite many of the facts and outcomes of this investigation by heart.
The tale is a publisher’s dream—a behind-the-scenes dive into what happens when noxious Hollywood power collides with big-media indifference. And in Catch and Kill, Farrow delivers, racing through the missteps and breakthroughs of his reporting as if he were on fire, skewering so very many along the way ... Weinstein comes off as an insatiable and horrifying predator, a true monster ... astounding and sickening at the same time, a celebration of all that is right with journalism—even as it exposes all that is so very broken ... The story of his reporting is fascinating. The story of how it almost never came to light is disgusting ... Certainly this kind of behind-the-scenes story demands a first-person perspective, but Farrow could have just as easily emphasized the sincere doggedness of his own reporting rather than lean on the faux-breathlessness of an airport-thriller genre. Frequently, his writing slips into hard-bitten cliché and head-scratching attempts at literary flourish ... a testament to the power of unrelenting journalism. A devastating and depressing and infuriating testament. But a testament all the same.
...NBC increasingly obstructed Farrow’s reporting, which adds a layer of intrigue to Catch and Kill. It doesn’t hurt that he has a fiction-writer’s flare for characterization ... The most unusual aspect of Farrow’s account, though, is the pushback he gets from NBC supervisors as the story gains momentum. Editors in books about journalistic triumph are usually high-minded, dedicated and supportive. Kantor and Twohey’s are nothing but admirable. Farrow has a very different experience.
Catch and Kill looks like a novel by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett with its 1940s movie-style garish graphic cover. It reads like one too ... As with those novels, you read it at a sitting. Because, like all great investigative reporters, he pulls plot and character into one pulse-quickening narrative ... It was the women’s stories which moved Farrow. And which move us. The women’s terror at breaking their silence is the most shocking part of it. This is what purges souls with pity and with terror.
The book is full of plot and drama ... By the end of the book, Farrow presents enough evidence to make it persuasive that the arguments made by NBC News higher-ups were an attempt to conceal the company’s own secrets ... if there is one thing that is clear from Catch and Kill it is that getting an allegation published is far from easy. This is a story about a ruling class of men who protect one another—and about the courage of women who speak up despite the social, and often legal, repercussions.
... [a] monumental work of journalism that should be added to a canon including such modern-day classics as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower and Jane Mayer's Dark Money, [a] consummate example of how to pursue leads, develop sources, analyze documents and collaborate with gifted (and sometimes not-so-gifted) editors. If [it] has its flaws, that shouldn't detract from [its] importance ... scans like a thriller but also employs all the tropes of that genre ... leaves an impression of déjà vu, as if one has binge-watched this sort of story before. It skillfully intercuts Farrow's battle to blow the whistle on Weinstein with his fight to maintain a romantic relationship, toggles from his tussles with his bosses to his struggles to evade the hired thugs hot on his tail ... touches give the writing the headiness of fiction but ever so slightly undercut its reality.
... delivers ... part All the President’s Men, part spy thriller (the book cover evokes a noir motif), with a dash of the personal mixed in ... utterly disheartening in its revelation of widespread abuses and cover-ups, the leverage of power and money to evade accountability and the many lives that were devastated in the process.
... this scoop-filled book, part reporting memoir, part spy thriller and part score-settling revenge tour, provides a mostly riveting and often shocking account of how Farrow hauled in his catch ... The book’s emotional heart, though, lies not with the relentless, neurotic Farrow, nor the dark forces arrayed against him, but with his sources, the women who spoke up despite the fear and intimidation ... This compelling story does offer a glimmer of hope amid the ordure: these women might be finally exposing the corruption and exploitation that lies at the heart of American public life. They deserve the credit, but it’s worth a nod to Farrow, too. He can be terribly sanctimonious, but the man’s thirst for a story cannot be denied. He even uses the book to slip out the news that he is engaged to Jon Lovett, the podcaster and former Obama speechwriter. For Farrow, it’s a rare admission of private emotion. And yet another scoop.
... reads like a thriller ... [an] intricate puzzle Farrow puts together with astounding reportorial reach and detail ... In his detailed laying out of systemic dread, Farrow does much to vividly describe the kind of horror story we still live in, when it comes to harassment and assault and, more broadly, to power imbalances and abuses.
... an important work ... Historically this book is going to have lasting importance as a vividly detailed, in-the-trenches account of the epic effort it took to try to bring down just a piece of the wall of patriarchy that has kept women exploited and oppressed in the media industry and American life forever. And, in that sense, I cannot praise Ronan Farrow enough ... captures for the ages what it took in the second decade of the 21st century to start to change the culture: years and years of work by outstanding journalists, lives and careers of myriad victims being ruined, expensive and possibly illegal campaigns by the oppressors to scare off reporters and keep victims silent and, oh yeah, those lovely non-disclosure forms.
The award-winning journalist sharply illuminates how he exposed Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator ... At times, the book is difficult to read, mainly because Weinstein, Trump, Lauer, and other powerful men victimized so many women while those who knew about the assaults stayed quiet. Nonetheless, this is an urgent, significant book that pairs well with She Said by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. Both books are top-notch accounts filled with timeless insights about investigative journalism, on a par with classics from Seymour Hersh and Bob Woodward ... A meticulously documented, essential work.
... vivid, labyrinthine ... Though a bit baggy, the narrative combines the intricate reporting of All the President's Men with Kafkaesque atmosphere to reveal troubling collusion between the media and the powerful interests they cover. This is a crackerjack journalistic thriller.
