You might have heard about 19-year-old Zac Brettler’s death falling from a Thames luxury apartment block. Police ruled it to be suicide – MI6 surveillance cameras from across the Thames showed he jumped. Zac’s parents were not so sure. Determined to find out what happened and with the help of an investigative journalist, they start digging. What they unearth will leave you gobsmacked. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe is a gripping non-fiction book: well-researched, well-written, an almost unbelievable story and, ultimately, deeply sad.
Radden Keefe is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and investigative journalist whose book Empire of Pain many will be familiar with. No stone is left unturned as the author and Zac’s parents, Matthew and Rachelle Brettler, try to unearth the truth. What transpires involve Russian oligarchs, 1980s East End gangsters, Amin’s Uganda, corrupt business men, questionable bankers, an evasive Metropolitan Police detective, drug dealers, cryptocurrency traders – even Thatcher makes a brief appearance – and is a fascinating deep dive into the darkest corners of London life.
Until the day Zac died, the Brettler family lived a comfortable, North London, middle-class life. Zac and his brother attended academic London private schools, while Matthew worked in finance and Rachelle as a journalist. Although Zac had started to extricate himself from family life, behaving erratically and showing an unhealthy obsession with wealth, nothing would prepare them for what came next.
It turns out Zac had convinced a number of shady characters from London’s underworld that he was the son of a Russian oligarch. With promises of large investments, he had become close to Akbar Shamji, whose crooked family background merits a book in itself, and Verinder Sharma, whose status as a seemingly untouchable criminal overlord leave Radden Keefe and Brettlers deeply suspicious.
I can’t help but admire Zac’s parents who bares something so personal and unbelievably sad as losing a son this way and expose Rachelle’s much loved, prominent rabbi father, as a bit of a fraud. Never mind the personal risk they must be running while stirring up the London underworld. An absolutely gripping read.
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe is published by Picador, 384 pages.
