London Falling: Mysterious Death In A Guilded City, A

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES No.1 BESTSELLER THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES No.1 BESTSELLER 'A defining book of our time' - The Times 'The master of the non-fiction narrative' - The Sunday Times 'A masterpiece' - The Observer 'Compulsive' - The Guardian 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. 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 -- Johanna Thomas-Corr, chief literary critic, The Times and Sunday Times He is a master - perhaps even the master - of the non-fiction narrative, and has an enviable knack for telling complicated stories with perfect clarity -- Craig Brown * The Sunday Times * 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 -- Ian Thomson * The Guardian * 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 -- Laura Cumming * Observer * Engrossing . . . In deftly unpicking [the story], Keefe makes it terrifyingly clear what dangerous company Zac had got himself into . . . rigorous and thoughtful -- James Walton * The Telegraph * Fortunately for him and his family, Zac Brettler came the way of one of the finest, and most famous, magazine writers in the English-speaking world, Patrick Radden Keefe . . . When Keefe flies into Heathrow, he comes to knock on the conscience of a nation . . . such a richly plotted maze, as twisting and interconnected as a nervous system . . . full of such extraordinarily rich scenes -- Nicholas Harris * New Statesman * London Falling is a parable of a 21st-century global city's moral decay . . . I was intrigued by whether an American writer could capture the nuances of the city's metamorphosis. Keefe does so admirably . . . Through masterful narration and exhaustive research, Keefe leaves the reader with little doubt as to why Brettler jumped -- Edward Luce * Financial Times * Keefe's mastery of timing makes this investigation a page-turner . . . we are fortunate to have him pounding the pavement to expose real-life darkness . . . in London Falling, the Brettlers' private story points to a larger one of a city changed by money . . . like all of Keefe's work, the book makes for propulsive reading -- Mia Levitin * The Irish Times * A masterclass of evidence-chasing, narrative clarity and authorial empathy . . . unputdownable -- Martin Vander Weyer * Literary Review * As this dark book makes clear, the city's "glitzy, mercenary, aspirational culture" allows grifters and gangsters to thrive * The Economist * Patrick Radden Keefe has published some of the most memorable nonfiction books of the last decade . . . [he writes] about emotionally complex, morally fraught subjects with sensitivity and skill -- Jennifer Szalai * The New York Times * A gripping real-life thriller that takes you on a deeply researched tour of the city's criminal underground. It broke me out of a can't-seem-to-finish-a-book rut -- Melissa Kirsch * The New York Times * London Falling is, it goes without saying, a masterpiece . . . perhaps the finest work of non-fiction about the London criminal classes * The Fence * Gripping . . . he has penned another classic in London Falling -- Richard Fitzpatrick * Irish Examiner * His most gripping book yet . . . As always with Keefe the pages turn themselves, and he sidesteps the exploitative pitfalls of the true crime genre by finding thrills in the margins . . . For all the praise Keefe receives for the depth of his reporting, the graceful humanity with which he approaches his subjects in London Falling is what ultimately leaves an impact -- Chris Stanton * New York Magazine * Another blockbuster feat of reportage . . . I sprinted through this addictive book in three days and gasped more than once at the true story's twists and turns -- Adam Morgan * Esquire * The best true-crime stories use a particular event as a key to unlock a world, and Patrick Radden Keefe's latest work of investigative nonfiction, London Falling, does just that . . . Keefe finds, in the death of one teenager, both a private loss and a parable of the decay of a once great city -- Laura Miller * Slate * How an American writer has managed to capture the nuances of London, its mores and class structure, is extraordinarily impressive . . . As ever with Keefe, the narratives are spliced masterfully, history is condensed tightly and characters are introduced (and then reintroduced) with an almost cinematic flourish . . . London Falling has a novelistic intimacy -- Charlie Baker * Spear's * [Keefe] brings his capacious literary toolbox to a true-life tale . . . [His] stylish, suspenseful prose shines a light onto the seedy underworld beneath an international capital * TIME * [The book is] written with Keefe's customary and compelling flair . . . He is that rarest of reporter birds, a deeply thorough investigative journalist who can actually write and tell a gripping human story . . . his mastery of the cliffhanger and suspenseful storytelling is what gives his non-fiction books their novelistic feel . . . Keefe's relentless drive to get to the bottom of the story [and] distaste for the excesses of capitalism . . . drives the compulsive energy of London Falling -- Ian Brown * The Globe and Mail * Author Biography: Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of 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 previous 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.