From the bestselling, prize-winning author ofSay NothingandEmpire of Pain, a spellbindingaccount of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret lifewhich drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneathLondons glittering surface

In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britains 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,but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled upand 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 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 sons death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one theyd always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zacs life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unableor unwillingto 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 Fallingis 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.

Patrick Radden Keefeis a staff writer atThe New Yorkerand the author, most recently, of theNew York TimesbestsellerSay Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 byThe New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post,theChicago Tribune,andThe Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade byEntertainment Weekly. His previous books areThe SnakeheadandChatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and theOrwellPrize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcastWind of Change.

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publish Date: April 7, 2026
• Pages: 384
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9780385548533
• Dimensions: 9.4 X 6.5 X 1.2 inches | 1.4 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Mystery, History, Family & Parenting