{ "item_title" : "London Falling", "item_author" : [" Patrick Radden Keefe "], "item_description" : "#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the bestselling, prizewinning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London's glittering surface In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain's spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river. In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: Her son was dead. In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji and a murderous gangster known as Indian Dave. As the Brettlers set about investigating their son's death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they'd always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac's life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable--or unwilling--to bring the perpetrators to justice. In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers' quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/38/554/853/0385548532_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "35.00", "online_price" : "31.36", "our_price" : "31.36", "club_price" : "31.36", "savings_pct" : "10", "savings_amt" : "3.64", "club_savings_pct" : "10", "club_savings_amt" : "3.64", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "35.00" } }

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It feels like taking a weight off and settling into a warm bath, reading the first few paragraphs of a new work by an author so capable that the book’s quality is immediately evident. There are none of those first-chapter jitters, wondering whether it will stack up or devolve into a slog; none of those dashed hopes of a promising back cover summary let down by the first page. 

That’s the joy of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, the latest from bestselling nonfiction author Patrick Radden Keefe. Like his prior books Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, London Falling expands on an article the journalist wrote for the New Yorker. This one also takes readers deep into a dark and deadly story. 

It’s the tale of Zac Brettler, a London teenager who fell to his death from a luxury tower along the River Thames in 2019. What at first seemed to be a tragic suicide quickly becomes more complicated as Brettler’s determined parents learn more about their son’s final days and the unexpected social circles he inhabited. Their quest is portrayed with a vividness made possible by Radden Keefe’s skill as a reporter and writer but also by the parents’ tendency to record conversations, especially with hapless police investigators incapable of uncovering more than grieving parents and a journalist. 

Impenetrable to most outsiders, London’s exclusive expat billionaires’ club and its grimy criminal underworld are both pierced by a relatively regular, upper-middle-class student. But Keefe takes the story further, with vibrant side quests to the 2000s Los Angeles rap scene, Idi Amin’s Uganda and more, adding depth to an already hearty narrative. 

Though some of the key questions posed by the death at the center of the book remain unanswered, perhaps forever, that incompleteness does little to dampen the power of the story or lessen the significance of what is actually uncovered. It’s John le Carré meets Skins in the newest thrilling effort from one of the best nonfiction writers working.