Synopsis
From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a riveting story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city.
'A defining book of our time' - Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times
'A masterpiece' - The Observer
'Compulsive' - The Guardian
'Breathtaking' - Jon Ronson
'Phenomenal' - Emily Maitlis
'More addictive than any box set' - Sathnam Sanghera
In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. On a desperate quest to understand how their son had died, his grieving parents made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.
Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought him to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s life of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld.
Details
07 April 2026
9781035056279Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Gripping, rigorous and smart, London Falling takes a terrible mystery with an extraordinary cast of characters and somehow manages to make it perfectly encapsulate the weirdness of how London has mutated these past decades . . . breathtaking
I've barely left the house since starting Patrick Radden Keefe’s superbly gripping London Falling . . . it will become a defining book of our time
A compulsive tale of money, lies and avoidable tragedy . . . a scrupulously researched work of narrative nonfiction . . . 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
Magnificent . . . London Falling is partly – and brilliantly – about the way London affects its young, forcing them to grow up so fast within sight of corruption . . . riveting and powerful . . . [Keefe] has a dramatist’s gift for structure and a novelist’s fascination with human character and motive . . . [An] enthralling masterpiece, by one of the world’s great non?fiction writers
