London Falling – Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is one of my automatic-buy authors, so you better believe that when I saw an advance audio copy of his new book, London Falling, available via Libro.fm, I nearly broke a finger in my rush to click “download”.

The story begins in 2019, with 19-year-old Zac Brettler jumping to his death from the balcony of a luxury London apartment. It seems like a simple – if sad – story, but in Patrick Radden Keefe’s telling, it is an epic tale of power, greed, and family.

The London he describes is “the capital of pristine facades”, and the reader is whisked into a world of wealth and privilege built on deceit and exploitation. It’s a world that Zac was desperate to inhabit, unbeknownst to his comfortably-middle-class family. After Zac’s death, his mother and father try to put the pieces together, and discover just how far Zac was willing to go for a taste of the glamorous London life he saw on Instagram.

London Falling is masterfully written, and perfectly paced despite its massive scope and complex web of connections. Through Zac’s story, Patrick Radden Keefe examines the seismic shifts that shape our lives (from Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies, to ethnic cleansing in Uganda, to COVID-19, to the Holocaust), and yet he never abandons the small details that make a story tangible (did you know that, on average, 30 bodies are retrieved from the Thames each year?).

I’ll grant that it’s occasionally tricky to keep track of who is who and what they’re doing in the audio format, but I attribute that more to my being so gripped I kept increasing the playback speed (and refusing to rewind) than any failing on the part of the author. London Falling is an incredible book, a true triumph of reporting and narrative non-fiction, with shades of My Friend Anna, Underbelly, and We Keep The Dead Close. Patrick Radden Keefe is truly going from strength to strength, and I’m already ready to call London Falling one of the best books of the year – if not the decade.

Read London Falling on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)