London Falling

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize
A riveting blend of true crime, social history, and investigative journalism written and read by one of the most decorated non-fiction authors working today, Patrick Radden Keefe.
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.
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. 'Told in riveting detail by the investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe . . . the book unfolds true crime like a thriller' - The Times, Best Summer Audiobooks 'Gripping, rigorous, smart . . . breathtaking' - Jon Ronson
'A phenomenal book that will stay in your soul long after the last page . . . it captures how easily a life can go wrong in the shadows of a city bankrolled by billionaires' - Emily Maitlis
'More addictive than any box set, London Falling will break your heart, instil you with cold rage, and make you see London in a completely new light' - Sathnam Sanghera

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search For Truth, 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 critically acclaimed books, The Snakehead and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020, and the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He lives in New York.