London Falling

In 2019, teenager Zac Brettler mysteriously fell to his death from a luxury apartment balcony into the Thames. As his grieving parents began to investigate his final days, they were shocked to learn that he’d been leading a double life, in which he was posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

This unsolved case is at the heart of London Falling – at once a family tragedy, a psychological portrait of a young fabulist, and an indictment of the greed for extreme wealth that has transformed one of the world’s great cities: London. Hiding in the shadows of its great architecture and imperial history are the malignant, mercenary forces that have come to influence us all – whether we realise it or not.

In his inimitably gripping and forensic style, Baillie Gifford winner and New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe explores what brought Zac Brettler (the grandson of famous rabbi Hugo Gryn) to the balcony that night – and how he became involved with some of London’s most notorious gangsters. Following Zac’s parents on a dark journey of investigation, London Falling unearths the unsettling truths they discovered – both about the sinister underworld on their doorstep, and about their son’s secret world.

Author Biography

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the bestsellers Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (a collection of his New Yorker stories) and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (named one of the 20 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times and now streaming as a limited series on Disney+), as well as two previous critically acclaimed books, The Snakehead and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020, and the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He lives in New York.