Catch and Kill

A Thriller That Happens to Be True

Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill, published in 2019, is the inside story of one of the most consequential pieces of journalism of the era — the investigation into Harvey Weinstein that helped ignite the #MeToo movement — and of the extraordinary, almost unbelievable lengths to which powerful men and institutions went to stop it from being told. The result reads like a spy thriller: full of surveillance, intimidation, secret recordings, double-dealing, and corporate cowardice, all the more gripping and disturbing for being entirely true. Farrow, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter, turns his own reporting into a propulsive, infuriating, and genuinely alarming account of what it takes to expose the abuses of the powerful, and of the machinery built to ensure they never are. It is an important book and a compulsively readable one.

The title refers to a practice in which a publication acquires the rights to a damaging story — about a powerful person — specifically in order to bury it, to “catch and kill” it before it can see daylight. The book reveals how this practice, and far darker tactics, were deployed to protect Weinstein. Farrow recounts his investigation in detail: the survivors who bravely came forward, the evidence he gathered (including a devastating audio recording), and then the resistance he encountered — not only from Weinstein’s camp but, shockingly, from his own employer, NBC News, which killed the story under circumstances Farrow lays out in damning detail before he took it to The New Yorker. Surrounding all this is the spy-thriller material that gives the book its propulsive dread: the private intelligence operatives (including agents of the Israeli firm Black Cube) hired to surveil and deceive Farrow and the survivors, the operatives posing as allies, the constant sense of being watched and undermined. It is a portrait of a vast apparatus of intimidation and suppression, and it is genuinely frightening.

The Power of the Reporting

What makes Catch and Kill so effective is the combination of its gripping narrative and its substantive importance. As a piece of storytelling, it is masterful — Farrow structures it for maximum tension, and the cumulative revelation of the forces arrayed against the truth builds an almost unbearable suspense. But beneath the thriller mechanics is serious, consequential journalism and a vital set of insights. The book demonstrates, with chilling specificity, how powerful predators are protected not merely by individual silence but by entire systems — by NDAs and settlements, by intimidation and surveillance, by media organizations afraid of powerful interests, by lawyers and operatives and enablers, by a whole ecosystem designed to ensure that victims are not believed and that journalists are stopped. It reveals how fragile investigative journalism actually is, how easily a true and important story can be killed, and how much courage it takes — from survivors above all, but also from reporters — to bring the truth to light against such resistance.

The survivors’ accounts are the moral heart of the book, and Farrow handles them with evident care and respect. The courage of the women who came forward, often at great personal cost and against enormous pressure, is the engine of the whole story, and Catch and Kill honors it while never losing sight of the systems that tried to silence them. The book is, finally, a tribute to that courage and an indictment of the machinery built to punish it.

The Caveats

Two honest caveats. First, Catch and Kill is, to a significant degree, Farrow’s own story — the account of his investigation, his obstacles, his persistence — and his presence at the center occasionally crowds the survivors whose experiences are the real subject. The thriller framing, which makes the book so readable, also foregrounds the reporter’s heroism in a way that some readers find slightly self-aggrandizing; the line between telling the necessary story of the suppression and centering himself is one Farrow mostly but not always navigates gracefully. Second, the content is harrowing. The accounts of abuse are difficult and painful to read, as they should be, and readers should be prepared for that.

Neither caveat seriously undermines the book. Farrow’s own experience is genuinely central to the story of how the reporting was nearly killed, and his account of the surveillance and pressure he faced is essential to understanding the apparatus of suppression. And the difficulty of the content is inseparable from its importance.

An Important, Gripping Book

Catch and Kill is both a riveting read and a significant work of public accountability. It exposes, in propulsive and meticulous detail, how power protects itself and silences its victims, and it stands as a landmark account of the reporting that helped catalyze a cultural reckoning. It is courageous, important, and disturbingly illuminating about the forces that work to keep the truth hidden.

For readers of investigative journalism and true crime, and for anyone interested in #MeToo, the abuse of power, and the fragile, vital work of holding the powerful accountable, it is essential — a real-life thriller with genuine moral weight, and a book that leaves the reader both gripped and justifiably alarmed.

Final Verdict

Our rating: 4.4/5 — A gripping, infuriating account of investigative journalism under siege. Farrow turns his Weinstein reporting into a real-life thriller about the lengths powerful men go to silence the truth. The reporter’s story occasionally crowds the survivors’, and the content is harrowing, but it’s propulsive, important, and genuinely alarming.

For more investigative nonfiction, see Bad Blood, Say Nothing, and Empire of Pain.