When you first heard about this story, was there a moment that you found yourself sort of leading in a little bit, like a detail, or is that a moment that came later?

It came right away. I actually knew, I mean, it was interesting. The pitch was as simple as I know this family. They lost a child, mysterious circumstances. After he died, they found out he was posing as the son of a Russian oligarch. And he had said that much, and I knew

if the family will agree to talk to me, this is the next year of my life.

I'm Gilbert Cruz. This is the book review for the New York Times, and today we've got Patrick

Radin Keefe on the show. Patrick is a writer for the New York Times, and today we've got Patrick Radin-Keefe on the show.

Patrick is a writer for the New Yorker.

He is also the author of several best-selling non-fiction books, including Say Nothing.

That book was number 19 on the Times' 100 best books of the 21st century, and it was also

adapted into a limited TV series.

His new book, London Falling,

is out now. It's about a young man named Zach Brettler, just 19 years old, who died after falling from a luxury apartment building into the River Thames in London. The book is an

investigation into Zach's death, as well as the shady criminal

underworld that he found himself dragged into. But it's also much more complicated than that.

When I talked to Patrick, he said he had first heard about the story back when he was working

on the TV version of his book Say Nothing. It was a pitch from someone who was very close friends with Zach's parents, Matthew and

Rochelle Brettler, and he said that they had made a startling discovery about their son.

They learned that he had been, unbeknownst to them, leading this secret double life in which he had

an alter ego, which they had been totally unaware of.

And he'd been moving around London, pretending at 18, 19 years old, that he was the son of a Russian oligarch, that his father was a Russian billionaire.

And so they made this discovery.

And they learned about all of this actually from these two guys who had been friends of Zach's and who were with him on the night that he died. And one of

them was a businessman named Akbar Shamji, who was kind of a very handsome, glamorous guy who lived on a really posh street in Mayfair, which is a really posh part of London.

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