London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City, and a Family’s Search for Truth

From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing – a stunning story of corruption and tragedy in one of the world’s great cities: London.

‘One of those authors I will always read, no matter what the subject matter . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative non-fiction’ – The Guardian on Empire of Pain

In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, mysteriously fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. When his grieving parents began their desperate quest to understand how their son had died, they made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

In his inimitably gripping and forensic prose, Baillie Gifford Prize winner and New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought Zac to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s world of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld.

London Falling is at once a devastating family tragedy, a riveting story of greed, power and deception, and an indictment of the culture that has transformed London into a haven for the malignant forces that have come to influence us all.

© 2026 Picador (Audiobook): 9781035056309

Release date

Audiobook: 7 April 2026