London Falling —book review

Hard not to have The Clash in your head when reading this. Their iconic London Calling song was written some 30 years earlier, but I feel the same sense of urgency and high stakes: London is drowning / And I, I live by the river.

Radden Keefe’s London Falling from the outside looks like a cleverly constructed and wildly imaginative crime novel but in fact, is a meticulously researched and impeccable referenced true story of the Russian-financed underworld in London and a boy who gets sucked in.

I’m not a reader of crime usually. What sort of weirdos treat crime as entertainment? I’ve got the newspaper for that. But this book is not written for the thrills. There is nothing whatever gratuitous about this story, even though it has all the elements available: a vulnerable boy, grieving family, sadistic hit men and Russian oligarchs, callous billionaire businessmen and the body fallen from the balcony to lie crumpled on the banks of the great, grey-green, greasy Thames. London is a labyrinth and there are dark places a kid should avoid.

I worked in the London financial sector for years blissfully unaware of where the financial buoyancy came from, naive little kiwi girl that I was. I knew the ‘boys’ were playing with big money but I didn’t see the extent of it nor the damages that trickle down. Who knew that men could get away with so much? I found this story quite shocking. And yes, the perpetrators in this story are all men. I imagine it’s still going on.

Chapter one starts: “After Zac Brettler dies, his parents tried to decode the mystery of what had happened to him…” and from there we go down the million rabbit holes that Radden Keefe investigates to put together Zac’s story. How can a boy pose as the son of a Russian oligarch; who does he meet and what do they want from him; what are the backgrounds of these shady men; who do they owe money to; who owns the clubs, the properties, the cars; where is the money hidden; what does ‘heating up the knives’ mean? Why haven’t the Metropolitan police and Scotland Yard interviewed that person or checked these emails? Everything always comes back to Zac. He is a much loved child. His parents asked Patrick Radden Keefe to find out: Why did he die?

London Falling is , like Radden Keefe’ earlier Empire of Pain, forensic investigation at it’s best. The guy’s a ferret.