While the book raises these thorny questions, Keefe seems reluctant to fully explore them. He is a master builder of intricate narratives, arranging the many pieces just so. London Falling suggests that Zac’s story is ultimately a crime story, in a city so warped by money that it’s losing its bearings. But it’s necessarily a family story, too. Keefe is too assiduous a journalist to be in thrall to the family’s perspective. Yet given the ordeal they endured, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the narrative — in what gets emphasized and what doesn’t — hews so closely to their point of view.
A propulsive true-crime story and surgical critique of the city’s glamorous façade and dark underbelly ... Ever a deft stylist ... His reporting is broad and agile, his prose sharp-edged ... Yet in a book about concealed (occasionally half-concealed) agendas, it’s fitting that Keefe has an agenda of his own. When the Met’s 'maddeningly incurious' detective stonewalls the Brettlers’ queries, the author becomes their sleuth ... Why not probe Zac’s sociopathic tendencies? Was Keefe co-opted by his friendship with the Brettlers? London Falling treads the fine line journalists walk when they bring biases to their reportage.
London Falling has a Dickensian texture, but nothing is fictional ... Detailed ... Mr. Keefe casts light on dark waters, and serves a measure of justice to Zac Brettler and his family.
The best true-crime stories use a particular event as a key to unlock a world, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s latest work of investigative nonfiction, London Falling, does just that ... While Keefe eventually comes up with a plausible scenario of what happened to Zac, for multifarious reasons—primarily that everyone involved was a liar—we’ll never know the truth for sure. In the end, however, all the stories Keefe assembles in London Falling strongly suggest that it was the city that destroyed the boy ...
Keefe deploys his considerable investigative skills to piece together the tragic story ... The collaboration transforms the narrative from a standard true-crime procedural into a profound exploration of parental grief and the search for accountability in a city that often protects its most shadowy residents. Keefe’s probity and knack for telling a compelling story...ensure that no stone is left unturned as he examines the Brettlers’ past lives with a clinical, if compassionate, eye, leaving even the most uncomfortable details of their family history fully exposed to the light.
Gripping ... Keefe, a New Yorker staff writer, is a master at using true crime as a vehicle for exploring social and political pathologies ... Intriguing.
[Keefe] is a master — perhaps even the master — of the non-fiction narrative, and has an enviable knack for telling complicated stories with perfect clarity. He is great on detail ... London Falling interleaves all sorts of unexpected people, places and things ... Touching and painful ... Keefe turns London into a dark and looming presence ... Isn’t this rather overdoing it? ... On the other hand, the sinister details amassed by Keefe do reveal a parallel London, invisible to most of us but there nonetheless.
Keefe has written his most intimate true story ... At once an investigation into a troubling demise and a sweeping criminal history of London since the city’s morally elastic embrace of freshly wealthy Russian oligarchs ... He is that rarest of reporter birds, a deeply thorough investigative journalist who can actually write and tell a gripping human story. Anyone who starts London Falling will finish it quickly.
Character-rich ... Chronicles the oversights by Scotland Yard in Zac’s case in meticulous detail ... Written with great respect not only for the family but also for the form – honouring the rhythm of a book-length exposé, rather than with an eye towards adaptation ... Like all of Keefe’s work, the book makes for propulsive reading.
In this age of AI deepfakes, denialism, and conflicting narratives dressed up as 'alternative facts,' it can be difficult to tease out the heart of a matter. This is even more true when a fraught situation arises, such as the death — ostensibly by suicide but under curious circumstances — of a young man who seems to have been living multiple lives. In London Falling, master storyteller Patrick Radden Keefe attempts, with compassion and clarity, to untangle just such a situation ... Fans of rigorous reporting, multilayered true-crime stories, and portraits of families in crisis will find something to love in this tour de force.
A scrupulously researched work ... Grimly absorbing from start to finish ... Keefe, perhaps best known now for his books including Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, writes in the page-turning tradition of Gay Talese and Joseph Mitchell.
Fascinating ... The book takes on the beats of a classic family drama alongside the elements of a true crime investigation ... The details of London Falling spread out like a slow-motion lightning strike, with pieces snaking off in all directions, while Keefe faithfully tracks its primary path to the ground ... Keefe writes about all his subjects with a keen sense of understanding about why people make the choices they do and how permeable the line to illicit behavior truly is.
A new work by an author so capable that the book’s quality is immediately evident ... Though some of the key questions posed by the death at the center of the book remain unanswered, perhaps forever, that incompleteness does little to dampen the power of the story or lessen the significance of what is actually uncovered. It’s John le Carré meets Skins in the newest thrilling effort from one of the best nonfiction writers working.
A meticulously researched propulsive thriller ... With empathetic insight, Keefe deftly sifts through facts and fictions to distill Zac's young life, enthrallingly seeking the unknowable truth of his tragic death.
This tour de force of staggering yet sensitive reportage also brings in England’s colonial past, the history of the banking industry, and the stories of Zac’s Holocaust-survivor grandfathers.
Gripping ... Keefe’s approach is profoundly humane, particularly in his intimate interviews with Zac’s parents, Matthew and Rachelle, who convey a deep desire to understand their late son. Despite the murky material, Keefe arrives at an artful and clarifying explanation. It’s a remarkable new turn for the celebrated author.
