LONDON FALLING

A tragic death in a transformed city.

Keefe, the author of some of this century’s finest nonfiction, has crafted another masterwork. This is a penetrating portrait of a young man destroyed by malignant influences given free rein in a global hub of capitalist excess. In November 2019, 19-year-old Zac Brettler leapt from the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment in London, falling to his death in the Thames. But this was no straightforward suicide. Brettler, well-off but not rich, had become fixated on opulence, spending nights on social media admiring the “glitzy, mercenary, aspirational culture” embodied by foreign billionaires who’d bought mansions and soccer clubs in his city. Hoping to join their number, he contrived a false identity that led to his undoing. Posing as “Zac Ismailov,” a Russian oligarch’s son, Brettler befriended shady entrepreneurs. At 18, he showed his real father—who works in finance but isn’t “flashy,” Keefe writes—an authentic-looking bank statement for a personal account holding about $1 million. Keefe uncovers details that suggest Brettler jumped to escape from one of his new purported friends, a “violent” extortionist. Keefe might be our sharpest chronicler of the intersection of criminal opportunism and institutional fecklessness. The author finds witnesses and writes of the “bizarre passivity of Scotland Yard,” decimated by budget cuts. He tallies the harm done by decades of deregulation in London, where the financial sector is stacked with “professional facilitators eager to help protect or conceal a dubious fortune.” And he closely observes his real-life characters, sensitively showing the very different ways in which Brettler’s parents processed their pain. This is powerful reporting, a potential classic about the dangerous allure of a city remade as “a twenty-four-hour laundromat for dirty money.”

An exemplary account of naïveté, wealth, and menace, impeccably told by a top-notch journalist.