Patrick Radden Keefe for London Falling

'One of those authors I will always read, no matter what the subject matter . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative non-fiction' - The Guardian on Empire of Pain

In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, mysteriously fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. When his grieving parents began their desperate quest to understand how their son had died, they made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

In his inimitably gripping and forensic prose, Baillie Gifford Prize winner and New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac's parents on a dark journey to find out what brought Zac to the balcony that night - and how a teenager's world of make-believe drew him into the city's terrifying underworld.

London Falling is at once a devastating family tragedy, a riveting story of greed, power and deception, and an indictment of the culture that has transformed London into a haven for the malignant forces that have come to influence us all.

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.