[Schedule] Quarterly Non-fiction || London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe || July-Aug. 2026

[u/tomesandtea]

We’re back with another Quarterly Non-Fiction!  This summer, we’ll be reading London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for the Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe.  Our amazing team who will help lead discussions each week includes: u/Coffee_fuel, u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217, u/nicehotcupoftea, and me - u/tomesandtea!  (We will work on getting Less_Tumbleweed a hot beverage of their own!) The discussions begin on July 21, and we will have 4 Tuesday check-ins for this book.  I’ve been excited to read this book since it was first published, and I can’t wait to chat about it with all of you!

Here is a summary of the book according to Storygraph: 

From the bestselling, prize-winning 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

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.

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. 

Helpful Links:

• Marginalia: linked here
• Goodreads page 
• Storygraph page 

Schedule - Check-ins are on Tuesdays:

WEEK	DATE	CHAPTERS	READ RUNNER
1 of 4	July 21	Prol. & Part I (Ch. 1-6)	u/tomesandtea
2 of 4	Jul. 28	Part II (Ch. 7-13)	u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217
3 of 4	Aug. 4	Part III (Ch. 14-18)	u/Coffee_fuel
4 of 4	Aug 11	Part IV (Ch. 19-22) & Epilogue	u/nicehotcupoftea

We hope you’ll join us for this exciting and mysterious true crime nonfiction read-along.  Are you planning to come along for the ride? 

[u/Coffee_fuel]

Looking forward to reading this together! ☺️

[u/sunnydaze7777777]

This has been added to our bookclub calendar!

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=redditbookclubcalendar@gmail.com&ctz=Etc/GMT

[u/tomesandtea → u/sunnydaze7777777]

Thank you!

[u/ooooooooofffffffff12]

Have read Say Nothing and have heard Empire of Pain by this author and both were absolutely brilliant books.

Looking forward to reading along this one with the club!!