London Falling

by Patrick Radden Keefe ★★★★☆

London Falling opens with a play-by-play account of CCTV footage from November 2019. In the footage, a young is seen briefly pacing on a fifth-floor balcony of an upscale apartment building called Riverwalk that borders the Thames, in London. "He made his way to one corner of the balcony and seemed to peer over the ledge, before crossing to the other corner and briefly pausing there. Then, returning to the center of the balcony, he jumped."

The young man was Zac Brettler, 19-years-old, and, by all accounts, not someone who had shown any signs of wishing to end his life. His parents were predictably gutted by his death, but they also desperately sought answers. Why would Zac take his own life? And did he in fact jump? Or was he pushed, either physically or through coercion? And why was he in a wealthy apartment bordering the Thames?

As the police began to ask questions about the circumstances surrounding Zac;'s death, the story became far from cut-and-dry. Those with Zac the night he died walked on the edge of the law. The apartment was owned by a man named Verinder Sharma, a gangster with a history of brutal violence. Also with him was a man named Akbar Shamji, a London businessman with a checkered past. How would Zac ever meet these unsavory characters, much less be in close contact with them?

Patrick Radden Keefe is best known for his 2021 book Empire of Pain about the Sackler family and the opoid crisis in America. The author applies the same journalistic tenacity when tracking down all angles in play with Zac's death. Radden Keefe gradually and expertly reveals layer upon layer of secrets that brought all of the parties involved to the luxury apartment in Riverwalk on the night in question. And as each secret is revealed, readers come to realize there are far more components to the suicidal plunge than one might imagine.

This was a borderline 5-star read for me, and as non-fiction goes there's little additional that I wanted from the book. There are, perhaps, a few unnecessary areas of exposition that could have been edited down. As someone who primarily reads fiction, I'm also pre-programmed to expect a tidy conclusion, and while Radden Keefe leaves little doubt as to what likely took place, we as readers are not rewarded with indisputable and definitive answers. Those small nits bumped it to something closer to a 4.5, but it's a book I'd strongly recommend for fans of non-fiction that reads like a crime novel.

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Quick Facts

• Title: London Falling

• Author: Patrick Radden Keefe

• Publisher: Doubleday

• Release Date: April 7, 2026

• Format: Audiobook

• ISBN-13: 978-0385548540

• Pages: 379