London Falling

The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller

De: Patrick Radden Keefe

Narrado por: Patrick Radden Keefe

A riveting blend of true crime, social history, and investigative journalism written and read by one of the most decorated non-fiction authors working today, Patrick Radden Keefe.

From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a riveting story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city.

In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. On a desperate quest to understand how their son had died, his grieving parents made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought him to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s life of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld.

'Gripping, rigorous, smart . . . breathtaking' - Jon Ronson

'A phenomenal book that will stay in your soul long after the last page . . . it captures how easily a life can go wrong in the shadows of a city bankrolled by billionaires' - Emily Maitlis

'More addictive than any box set, London Falling will break your heart, instil you with cold rage, and make you see London in a completely new light' - Sathnam Sanghera

Reseñas de la Crítica

Gripping, rigorous and smart, London Falling takes a terrible mystery with an extraordinary cast of characters and somehow manages to make it perfectly encapsulate the weirdness of how London has mutated these past decades . . . breathtaking (Jon Ronson)

[Keefe] has a real gift for storytelling, an ability to unfurl the narrative in a way that is completely engrossing (Louis Theroux)

I've barely left the house since starting Patrick Radden Keefe’s superbly gripping London Falling . . . it will become a defining book of our time (Johanna Thomas-Corr, chief literary critic, The Times and Sunday Times)

He is a master — perhaps even the master — of the non-fiction narrative, and has an enviable knack for telling complicated stories with perfect clarity (Craig Brown)

A compulsive tale of money, lies and avoidable tragedy . . . a scrupulously researched work of narrative nonfiction . . . London Falling, grimly absorbing from start to finish, opens a window on to a world of financial dirty work and Walter Mitty-like fantasies of aspirational wealth (Ian Thomson)

Magnificent . . . London Falling is partly – and brilliantly – about the way London affects its young, forcing them to grow up so fast within sight of corruption . . . riveting and powerful . . . [Keefe] has a dramatist’s gift for structure and a novelist’s fascination with human character and motive . . . [An] enthralling masterpiece, by one of the world’s great non-fiction writers (Laura Cumming)

Engrossing . . . In deftly unpicking [the story], Keefe makes it terrifyingly clear what dangerous company Zac had got himself into . . . rigorous and thoughtful (James Walton)

Fortunately for him and his family, Zac Brettler came the way of one of the finest, and most famous, magazine writers in the English-speaking world, Patrick Radden Keefe . . . When Keefe flies into Heathrow, he comes to knock on the conscience of a nation . . . such a richly plotted maze, as twisting and interconnected as a nervous system . . . full of such extraordinarily rich scenes (Nicholas Harris)

London Falling is a parable of a 21st-century global city’s moral decay . . . I was intrigued by whether an American writer could capture the nuances of the city’s metamorphosis. Keefe does so admirably . . . Through masterful narration and exhaustive research, Keefe leaves the reader with little doubt as to why Brettler jumped (Edward Luce)

Outstanding

Patrick never fails to deliver. This reads like a thriller. The end note of how the UK court don't keep records is nothing short of alarming.