Patrick Radden Keefe on 'London Falling' and the mystery of Zac Brettler

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2026

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In November of 2019, a young man leaped into the Thames River from a London apartment building and died. After 19-year-old Zac Brettler’s death, his parents learned their son had adopted a false identity as the son of a Russian oligarch. The mystery surrounding Brettler’s identity is the subject of Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book London Falling. In today’s episode, the author joins NPR’s Scott Simon for a conversation about Brettler’s life in London among a crowd that worshipped wealth, the teen’s talent for accents, voices, and stories, and how Brettler got mixed up in a mutual con with an older businessman named Akbar Shamji.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Tim Bidiremias. On today's episode, a book about
0:07.9	London's underworld and a young man who got swept up in it. Writer Patrick Radin-Keefe has built
0:13.9	a celebrated career for his deep investigative reporting. You might know some of his works,
0:18.9	like Say Nothing, an Empire of Pain. He's out now with a new
0:23.0	book called London Falling. It explores the true life of London teenager, Zach Brettler, whose mysterious
0:29.4	death unveils a web of secrets. Here he is talking about it with weekend edition host, Scott Simon.
0:36.9	224 a.m., November 29, 2019,
0:40.8	a young man paced back and forth on a high balcony
0:43.3	of the Riverwalk apartment tower in London.
0:47.1	Cameras at MI6 headquarters
0:48.7	recorded the scene as the young man leapt into the Thames River
0:52.2	and died.
0:54.6	Zach Brettler was 19.
0:56.3	His parents were shocked and bereaved, and then they were staggered to learn,
1:02.3	that their son had adopted a false identity.
1:05.6	Zach Ismailov, the son and heir of a Russian oligarch.
1:11.2	London Falling is the new book that tries to unravel the other lives and questions about Zach Brettler and a London underworld.
1:19.0	Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of previous books, including Say Nothing, An Empire of Pain.
1:26.9	He joins us from our studios in New York.
1:29.1	Thanks so much for being with us.
1:30.6	It's great to be with you.
1:32.4	The police ruled his death as suicide.
	...

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