Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
Year published: 2026
Category: Adult nonfiction
Pages: 384
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2026 Google Reading map): UK
Summary: 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.
Review: I enjoyed Keefe's Say Nothing (link to my review) when I read it years ago so was excited when my virtual book group chose London Falling to read. And, the author reads the book on the audio book so that seemed like a good choice. I was hooked from the start.
I like that the story makes London a character (I've lived in London a couple of times and have gone to Britain/London every year or two for most of my life since my family lives there). Learning more about the Thames River and the neighborhoods made the story even more alive. And the descriptions of the Russian oligarchs moving in and buying up property was super interesting.
Zac was a fabulist and pulled it off really well for a couple of years until his untimely death (what a tragic story this is). Keefe tells such a good story, including just enough detail to pull the reader in, but not overwhelming us. His research is extensive (and he includes a note about his sources at the end that is interesting), and it shows as we get to read/hear conversations that took place along the way, and a level of detail that makes the reader feel they are there.
It does reveal the mess-up that the police made in their investigation along the way, ignoring information, not doing DNA testing on evidence, and losing evidence. The author (and others) even intimate that the police and the suspects may have been connected (could he be a police informant?). I was riveted to this book; I hope my book group members are finding it just as good.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Nonfiction
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