London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth - Paperback

$37.00
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London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth
  • London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth - Paperback

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth - Paperback

by Patrick Radden Keefe
$37.00
$37.00
Format
Paperback · Large Print $37.00 Hardcover $35.00

Book Overview

From the bestselling, prize-winning 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, 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 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.
ISBN9798217290239
Author Patrick Radden Keefe
PublisherRandom House Large Print Publishing
GenreRelationships
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages592
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeLarge Print

Related Subjects

Family & Relationships Nonfiction True Crime

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More by Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth - Paperback

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth - Paperback

By Patrick Radden Keefe

About Patrick Radden Keefe

PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York, and The New York Review of Books, among others and he is a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC, and MSNBC. Patrick received the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story "A Loaded Gun," was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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