In 2019, a 19-year-old young man by the name of Zac Brettler jumped off the balcony of a London high-rise apartment to his death. At the time it was a story that barely made the news. But the award-winning journalist, Patrick Radden Keefe, based on a conversation he had with a friend of Zac’s family, became curious.

​Keefe learned that prior to Zac’s jump, the teenager had been leading a double life, traveling around London pretending to be the son of a Russian oligarch. His real parents, Rachelle and Matthew Brettler, wanted the best for Zac and they were worried about his lifestyle, but they had no clue about the dangerous friends he was making. His parents were competing with a changing London where, thanks to the oligarchs and their associates, magnificent high-rise apartments, fancy nightclubs, expensive cars, etc., were going up everywhere.

​Patrick Radden Keefe also wanted to know: How did it turn so dark? Was Zac’s death a suicide? Or a desperate attempt to get away from the fate awaiting him that night inside an apartment owned by Verinder Sharma, a vicious career criminal also known as Indian Dave? And so Keefe started to research, and London Falling, currently an international bestseller, is the result.

In telling Zac Brettler’s story, London Falling tackles a number of subjects: When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian oligarchs needed a place to store their billions. They headed to London. They liked the city, the culture, the school system, but they also changed the city. It became impossible to live there unless you were very wealthy (which is true of most major cities these days). Zac’s parents were well off. They sent him to good schools, but Zac wanted more. And so he created a new persona, the son of an oligarch, hoping this could get him inside the world of the billionaires where the deals are made.

​London Falling spends a good amount of time going into the history of Verinder Sharma and Akbar Shamji who were at the apartment on the night of Zac’s death. Too much time, in my opinion. It’s a testament to the amount of research Keefe has done, but I didn’t need, for example, a long chapter devoted to Akbar’s father, also a questionable character. As for Zac Brettler, he remained a mystery for me. Why this obsession with wealth and status? He saw it all around him, not only in London but on the social media algorithms he would spend time scrolling through each night. But his older brother, Joe, never got ensnared.

​Finally, this is a book about Zac’s parents, Rachelle and Matthew Brettler. They bring the human element to London Falling. Even before the death of their son there was tragedy in their family history. Both of their fathers were Holocaust survivors. But they survived, moved to England, and built a good life for their children as Rachelle and Matthew tried to do for Joe and Zac.

London Falling is an important book. Well written, amazing research and not just a book about London. Ultimately this is a story about how hard it is to raise kids particularly now in the age of social media, billionaires, tictok etc which can lead kids astray.

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