London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe

 

Hello my lovely readers! Patrick Radden Keefe never misses. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

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, 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 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.

MY THOUGHTS
Patrick Radden Keefe is definitely becoming an auto-buy/auto-read author to me! 

After reading Say Nothing last month, I was blown away with Keefe's storytelling. It was gritty and raw and it made me feel uncomfortable.

The same thing happened with this book. Diving into London's underworld was grimy, shady and gripping. I feel like I need to take a shower after reading this!

It was a little bogged down with details and their was a major mistake when they listed someone's death year as 2009 versus 2014, but otherwise this book was great, though sad.