NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, TIME, Oprah Daily, Vulture, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Cultured, LitHub, Service95, Bookriot
“Consider this a real-life Harlan Coben novel. After 19-year-old Zac Brettler plunges to his death in the river Thames, his grieving family discovers his secret life posing as the heir of a phony Russian oligarch. From there, Keefe reconstructs the seedy underbelly of London that the Brettlers delve into as they attempt to pinpoint what—or who—killed their son.”
—The New York Times
“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
“[Keefe] brings his capacious literary toolbox to a true-life tale that opens with the apparent suicide. . . . [His] stylish, suspenseful prose shines a light onto the seedy underworld beneath an international capital.”
—TIME
“Keefe, the author of some of this century’s finest nonfiction, has crafted another masterwork. This is a penetrating portrait of a young man destroyed by malignant influences given free rein in a global hub of capitalist excess. . . . Keefe might be our sharpest chronicler of the intersection of criminal opportunism and institutional fecklessness. . . . This is powerful reporting, a potential classic about the dangerous allure of a city remade as ‘a twenty-four-hour laundromat for dirty money.’ An exemplary account of naïveté, wealth, and menace, impeccably told by a top-notch journalist.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[A] gripping investigation into a young man’s mysterious death. . . . In between piecing together the facts, Keefe zooms out, vividly portraying the morass of the modern London underworld. . . . Keefe’s approach is profoundly humane, particularly in his intimate interviews with Zac’s parents, Matthew and Rachelle, who convey a deep desire to understand their late son. Despite the murky material, Keefe arrives at an artful and clarifying explanation. It’s a remarkable new turn for the celebrated author.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A meticulously researched propulsive thriller. . . . A feat of remarkable reportage. . . . Irresistible. . . . Keefe’s unerringly razor-sharp attention links these disparate elements of heedless ambition, uninhibited risks, and otherworldly privilege that created a powerful vacuum of want in a tenacious teen desperate for access. With empathetic insight, Keefe deftly sifts through facts and fictions to distill Zac’s young life, enthrallingly seeking the unknowable truth of his tragic death.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Nobody writes like Patrick Radden Keefe; nobody makes achieving something so powerfully complex and difficult look so easy. It’s a form of intellectual generosity and, I think, a form of genius. London Falling is a book everyone should read; it grips like a steel trap. To finish it is to be furious at the corruption, criminality and brutality hidden behind the facades of London’s wealth—but the warmth of the authorial voice, and the grace of the Brettler family, keep you from despairing.”
—Katherine Rundell, author of The Transformations of John Dunne and Vanishing Treasures
