What readers think of London Falling, plus links to write your own review.

LONDON FALLING
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Narrated by Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe investigates the mysterious 2019 death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler, a tragedy that exposes the dark underbelly of extreme wealth, deception, power, and criminality in modern London. After his death, Zac’s parents discovered an alternate life he had fabricated, claiming to be the son of a billionaire Russian oligarch.

Since the synopsis already gives away much of the story, I’ll avoid sharing any additional details. Patrick Radden Keefe was able to gather valuable information through interviews with Zac’s parents and others to write this fascinating and compelling account. I especially appreciated the backstories of Zac’s family and friends, which shed light on his life. We also learn that the police investigation was handled with remarkable carelessness and negligence.

This is a powerful read, but it is also an intimate portrayal of a parent’s love for their son and their desperate need to understand who he truly was.

I have not read any of Patrick Radden Keefe’s previous books, but after finishing London Falling, I’ll definitely be checking them out, along with anything else he writes. His prose is clean and effortlessly readable, drawing readers into the story without relying on overly descriptive or ornate language. The combination of carefully presented facts and personal interviews creates a deeply moving and lasting emotional impact.

Patrick Radden Keefe also narrates the audiobook, and I found his narration engaging and well suited to the material.

This is a scrupulously researched nonfiction book that began as an article in the New Yorker. In typical Patrick Radden Keefe style, the events of an early morning in November 2019 unfold when a surveillance camera at Britain's MI6's headquarters captured a "silhouette of a young man on the balcony of an apartment complex on the opposite side of the river. It was dark but the fifth-floor balcony was brightly lit." (The Guardian 4/7/2026). The young man, Zac Bettler, age 19, was found five hours later face down in the mud "face down in riverbank mud, shirtless and in tracksuit bottoms."

The book tackles the complicated elements of Zac's death: his secret life, his unsavory connections with "gangland debt collector and drug trafficker named Verinder Sharma" and Akbar Shamji. The place of the death, a luxury Thameside high-rise, was a far cry from Bettler's middle-class background. The building almost takes on a character-like presence in the book "standingas an emblem of corruption in a London tainted by oligarchic interests and corporate greed. Brettler’s death, is argued by Keefe, was the consequence of both his entrapment by criminal minds and the dangerous allure of speculatively acquired wealth." (The Guardian).

Keefe goes into great depth into the police investigation, the inquest and the wrenching grief of the parent, Rachelle and Matthew. He also explores the Rachelle's family and other ties that fulfill a portrait of Zac, helping us understand he's posturing to be someone he wasn't. This is a very thorough story.

Highly recommend.