London Falling cover art

London Falling

The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller

 Preview
Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199.00 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

London Falling

Written by: Patrick Radden Keefe
Narrated by: Patrick Radden Keefe
Free with 30-day trial

₹199.00 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹667.71

Buy Now for ₹667.71

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.

'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

 Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions Organised Crime True Crime
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic Reviews

Gripping, rigorous and smart, London Falling takes a terrible mystery with an extraordinary cast of characters and somehow manages to make it perfectly encapsulate the weirdness of how London has mutated these past decades . . . breathtaking (Jon Ronson)
[Keefe] has a real gift for storytelling, an ability to unfurl the narrative in a way that is completely engrossing (Louis Theroux)
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)
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)
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)
Engrossing . . . In deftly unpicking [the story], Keefe makes it terrifyingly clear what dangerous company Zac had got himself into . . . rigorous and thoughtful (James Walton)
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)
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)
All stars
Most relevant
This book picks up pieces from so many places and fits them together in a fascinating story. The narration is also top notch. One of my favourite reads for the year

True crime that reads like fiction

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The author had way of holding your attention. In all his books including this one. Very well narrated too

Intriguing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.