Is London Really Falling? Patrick Radden Keefe's Search for Truth in the Most Invisible of Cities

“Narrative remains a pretty unbeatable delivery device for information.” — Patrick Radden Keefe

Has London really fallen? That’s the question Patrick Radden Keefe — staff writer at The New Yorker and bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing — addressed in his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth.

One thing for sure is that Keefe himself hasn’t fallen. He’s been surprised by the book’s success. “I thought the antibodies would get up because I’m an interloper,” the American confesses about writing about Britain. Antibodies or not, the book has been a #1 bestseller in both the UK and US. And we can look forward to an A24 and Brightstar TV adaptation soon.

On London, the story is murkier. London Falling begins on November 29, 2019, when nineteen-year-old Zac Brettler falls to his death from a luxury apartment above the Thames. Every parent’s ultimate nightmare. As it happens, I’ve known Zac’s dad, Matthew, for many years. But what appeared to be a tragic accident or a suicide turned out to be something far more sinister — a story of double lives, dirty money, a dishonest businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a terrifyingly violent gangster known as Indian Dave.

Lurking behind the Brettler death is what Keefe presents as the greatest deceit of all — London’s cruel descent into what he sees as the moneyed miasma of post-Thatcherite neo-liberalism. London is, in Keefe’s compelling narrative, the most invisible of cities — where power lies with criminals like Indian Dave, where the police are at best bystanders, and where a teenage fantasist from a comfortable middle-class family can become fatally entangled in a fallen world he barely understood.

Five Takeaways

•       Zac Brettler: The Double Life That Led to His Death: Zac Brettler was nineteen years old. He fell — or was pushed, or was forced to jump — from a luxury apartment balcony above the Thames on November 29, 2019. He had been living a double life: to London’s criminal underworld, he was Zac Ismailov, the son of a Russian oligarch, heir to a great fortune. He had even fabricated bank statements showing a personal account holding $1 million. Under this guise, he became entangled with Akbar Shamji, a slippery businessman, and a man known as Indian Dave, a violent extortionist. Keefe’s reporting suggests Zac jumped to escape from one of these men. Scotland Yard’s passivity in investigating the case is, in Keefe’s word, bizarre.

•       London as a Twenty-Four-Hour Laundromat for Dirty Money: Keefe’s portrait of London is the book’s macro argument: a global city that has been hollowed out by decades of financial deregulation, whose financial sector is stacked with professional facilitators eager to help protect or conceal a dubious fortune, where posh mansions and private nightclubs serve as the visible surface of a hidden economy of criminal money. Zac Brettler was not rich. He was a boy from a comfortably off family who became fixated on the glitzy, mercenary, aspirational culture embodied by foreign billionaires who had bought mansions and football clubs in his city. London, in Keefe’s telling, did this to him.

•       The Brettlers’ Consent: A Long Haul With the Family: Keefe had written 15,000 words for The New Yorker when he knew there was a book. He went to Matthew and Rochelle Brettler and their surviving son Joe and told them: I will only do this with your blessing. They read the finished piece, talked amongst themselves, and came back with a yes. Keefe