London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe — a spellbinding true-crime investigation from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain.

In the early hours of November 29, 2019, surveillance cameras at MI6 headquarters captured a young man pacing on a high balcony of a luxury London tower overlooking the Thames. At 2:24 a.m. he fell into the river. He was nineteen-year-old Zac Brettler.

When police informed his parents of his death, Rachelle and Matthew Brettler were devastated. Only later did they discover that their son had been living a secret double life. Under the invented identity of Zac Ismailov — the fictional son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a vast fortune — he had become entangled with a slippery businessman and a dangerous gangster known as “Indian Dave.”

As the family searched for answers, they found themselves drawn into the shadowy underworld that thrives beneath London’s glittering surface of private clubs, luxury apartments, and dirty money. Scotland Yard’s investigation left critical questions unanswered. In a masterful feat of reporting, Patrick Radden Keefe reconstructs Zac’s final months and the Brettlers’ relentless quest for the truth, exposing a city where wealth, aspiration, and criminality collide.

Gripping, meticulously researched, and deeply human, London Falling is both a haunting family tragedy and a devastating portrait of modern London’s dark underside.