London Falling

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of <Say Nothing< and <Empire of Pain<, a spellbinding&nbsp;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&nbsp;which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath&nbsp;London&rsquo;s glittering surface

In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain&rsquo;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,&nbsp;but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up&nbsp;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 &ldquo;Indian Dave.&rdquo; As the Brettlers set about investigating their son&rsquo;s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they&rsquo;d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac&rsquo;s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable&mdash;or unwilling&mdash;to bring the perpetrators to justice.&nbsp;

In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers&rsquo; quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private night clubs, 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....

Autorentext

Patrick Radden Keefe

Klappentext

**#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

“Another blockbuster feat of reportage. . . . I sprinted through this addictive book in three days and gasped more than once at the true story’s twists and turns.”
—Esquire

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR**

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.

Leseprobe
PROLOGUE

The headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, occupies an imposing edifice of concrete and green glass on the south bank of the River Thames, in London. It was erected in the early 1990s, alongside Vauxhall Bridge, under circumstances of such secrecy that when the architect was commissioned to design the building, he did not know who he was designing it for.

The Thames is a tidal river, its powerful currents ebbing and surging twice each day with salt water from the North Sea. Occasionally a bottlenose whale will veer off course, separated from its pod, and wander downriver, dangerously far from the ocean. When the tide recedes, the Thames shrinks, its level plummeting by as much as twenty feet, exposing a muddy shoreline. Urban beachcombers—“mudlarks,” as they’re known—have unearthed artifacts of previous civilizations from the silt along the riverbanks: Bronze Age daggers and Iron Age coins.

It was the Thames that first drew the Romans, two thousand years ago, to establish a walled entrepôt, which they gave the name Londinium. By the heyday of the British Empire, London had colonized a quarter of the globe. In 1860, half of all exports from Asia, Africa, and Latin America were sent there; the Thames was the busiest port in the world. Hundreds of ships arrived each week, and towering cranes unloaded tobacco, ivory, spices, wool, rice, tea, and other treasures. The river was teeming, thrumming with commerce, jostling with all manner of vessels and tradesmen and stevedores and mariners from strange lands, hinting at the existence of other civilizations over the horizon.

But the riverbank could be a frightening place as well. In the Victorian era, the waterfront was rife with crime. People had an alarming tendency to die in the Thames, whether voluntarily, in a moment of despair, or because somebody pushed them. If you misstepped on a slick cobble after a night out drinking, the black water could suck you under in an instant. In the work of Charles Dickens, the river was often depicted as a malignant force, grimy and malodorous, “lapping at piles and posts and iron rings, hiding stran…