London Falling
London Falling
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Couldn't load pickup availability
Share
About the Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling, prizewinning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface
In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river.
In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: Her son was dead.
In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji and a murderous gangster known as Indian Dave. As the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable—or unwilling—to bring the perpetrators to justice.
In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.
About the Author
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of The New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain (winner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize) and Say Nothing, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the Twenty Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Book Review. . His work has been recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He served as an Executive Producer on the award-winning FX series “Say Nothing,” based on his book. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast “Wind of Change,” about the strange convergence of Cold War espionage and heavy metal music, which The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly named the #1 podcast of 2020.
Editorial Reviews
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, TIME, Oprah Daily, Vulture, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Cultured, LitHub, Service95, Bookriot
“Consider this a real-life Harlan Coben novel. After 19-year-old Zac Brettler plunges to his death in the river Thames, his grieving family discovers his secret life posing as the heir of a phony Russian oligarch. From there, Keefe reconstructs the seedy underbelly of London that the Brettlers delve into as they attempt to pinpoint what—or who—killed their son.” —The New York Times
“A remarkable true-crime story. A 19-year-old fell to his death in London. Behind the tragedy lay so much more, as Keefe’s latest book uncovers. . . . The best true-crime stories use a particular event as a key to unlock a world, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s latest work of investigative nonfiction, London Falling, does just that. . . . Keefe finds, in the death of one teenager, both a private loss and a parable of the decay of a once great city.” —Laura Miller, Slate
“A strange story of wealth, delusion, and violence. . . . [Keefe] shows how London’s vicious currents turn with the tides of finance and immigration. . . . London Falling has a Dickensian texture, but nothing is fictional. Dickens’s readers balk at his use of caricature and coincidence, but as Mr. Keefe shows, both are appropriate for a money-mad city full of affluence and anonymity, weird proximities and sudden death. . . . Keefe casts light on dark waters, and serves a measure of justice to Zac Brettler and his family.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Another blockbuster feat of reportage. . . . I sprinted through this addictive book in three days and gasped more than once at the true story’s twists and turns.” —Adam Morgan, Esquire
“A propulsive true-crime story and surgical critique of the city’s glamorous façade and dark underbelly. . . . His reporting is broad and agile, his prose sharp-edged. . . . Keefe has written a morality tale for an amoral age while entertaining us with shootouts, robberies, heroin deals, and an enigmatic puzzle. His journalism is rooted in our obligations to each other, old-fashioned Eagle Scout citizenship, at a moment when might makes right and obscene wealth overwhelms our institutions.” —Boston Globe
“London Falling, is [Keefe’s] most gripping book yet, using its initially narrow premise . . . as an entry point into the more expansive story of London’s underworld and the downstream effects of what happens when greed corrupts a city at its highest levels. As always with Keefe the pages turn themselves, and he sidesteps the exploitative pitfalls of the true-crime genre by finding thrills in the margins. . . . When Keefe returns to Brettler’s story, it becomes one about modern parenting and the search for peace amid unresolvable grief.” —New York Magazine
“[Keefe] brings his capacious literary toolbox to a true-life tale that opens with the apparent suicide. . . . [His] stylish, suspenseful prose shines a light onto the seedy underworld beneath an international capital.” —TIME
“Gripping. . . . Keefe is a master at using true crime as a vehicle for exploring social and political pathologies.” —NPR
“London Falling is superbly gripping. This investigation into the real-life death of a teenage boy follows the trail where money, power and secrecy mingle in the capital. I predict it will become a defining book of our time.” —Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times (UK)
“A profound exploration of parental grief and the search for accountability in a city that often protects its most shadowy residents. . . . Compelling.” —Air Mail
“London Falling, grimly absorbing from start to finish, opens a window on to a world of financial dirty work and Walter Mitty-like fantasies of aspirational wealth.” —The Guardian