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.

'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 boxset, this book will break your heart, instill you with cold rage, and make you see London in a completely new light' Sathnam Sanghera

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.

Mesmerising. More addictive than any boxset, this book will break your heart, instill you with cold rage, and make you see London in a completely new light -- Sathnam Sanghera
Patrick Radden Keefe has done it again - a phenomenal book that will stay in your soul long after the last page. London Falling is a tale of money and fantasy, fear and deception - that leads a deeply loved teenager to his death. Haunting, harrowing, and rich with empathy - it captures how easily a life can go wrong in the shadows of a city bankrolled by billionaires. A grieving parent’s questions go unanswered; a vital clue is met with an official shrug. And the crimes of the capital are swallowed up beneath a gleaming corporate veneer. This is a chilling story - told with humanity, curiosity and quiet outrage. It’s one that simply will not let you go. Put the phone to airplane mode, turn on the out-of-office: I guarantee you won’t want to be disturbed -- Emily Maitlis
Monumentally good. Patrick Radden Keefe is the finest non-fiction writer we have: a born storyteller with a fluent mastery of structure who marshals exceptional reporting with unsentimental compassion. London Falling tells the story of a family tragedy and of a city in flux, while also tracing a lineage of generational trauma and the human capacity for reinvention. I will never look at my city in quite the same way again -- Elizabeth Day
Troubling, humane and gripping, a journey across London’s dark heart and the murky death of a young man – part thriller, part psychological journey, part modern morality tale, Keefe is a literary non-fiction great and he’s done it again -- Philippe Sands
A gripping, heartbreaking and unsettling book about my city - a city, it turns out, I don’t know at all. Patrick Radden Keefe’s X-ray vision exposes the hidden networks, the dirty money, and our depressing surrender to malevolent billionaires. London Falling is important and brilliant -- Nick Hornby

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the bestsellers Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (a collection of his New Yorker stories) and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (named one of the 20 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times and now streaming as a limited series on Disney+), as well as two previous critically acclaimed books, The Snakehead and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020, and the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He lives in New York.