Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In November 2019, Londoners Rachelle and Matthew Brettler's 19-year-old son Zac jumped from the fifth-floor balcony of an elite condo building on the Thames; his body was found the next morning. The Brettlers soon discovered Zac, a privileged teen whose behavior had changed in later adolescence, had been posing in certain powerful circles as the son of a Russian oligarch and the inheritor of billions. Exactly who he had been consorting with, and the nature of his jump from the balcony—suicide or survival?—became the Brettlers' obsession as London's police force kept leaving them unsatisfied, giving up too soon on far too many leads. Wary of the British press, the Brettlers kept their story private until they were introduced to Keefe, whose 2024 New Yorker article about Zac's death would launch their private loss into public conversation. Based on Keefe's years of communications with the Brettlers and exhaustive research into Zac's life and death and London's criminal underworld, 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. Ultimately, Keefe arrives at a relatively simple (and sad, and sordid) conclusion. As Rachelle told Keefe, "It's been eye-opening. This whole world we did not know about, this underworld that exists on our doorstep."HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Particularly after the popular streaming adaptation of Keefe's Say Nothing (2019), readers recognize him as a go-to author of riveting narrative nonfiction, and this contemporary story is sure to spark interest.

Publishers Weekly
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“The truth is, everybody lies,” observes New Yorker staff writer and National Book Critics Circle award winner Keefe (Say Nothing) in this gripping investigation into a young man’s mysterious death in 2019 London. Surveillance footage shows Zac Brettler, 19, jumping from a fourth-story apartment balcony into the Thames, apparently fleeing for his life. The man living in the apartment, a middle-aged gangland enforcer named Verinder Sharma, died a year later, stymieing Scotland Yard’s criminal investigation. The only other witness, a businessman named Akbar Shamji, was caught lying to the police and offered no help beyond an initial bombshell revelation, disclosed to Zac’s grieving parents shortly after his death, that Zac had for some reason fooled him and Verinder into thinking he was the son of a Russian oligarch. In between piecing together the facts, Keefe zooms out, vividly portraying the morass of the modern London underworld, a “twenty-four-hour laundromat for dirty money... full of crooks with pretensions to legitimacy and businessmen who seem a little crooked.” 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. Agent: Tina Bennett, Bennett Literary. (Apr.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A tragic death in a transformed city. Keefe, the author of some of this century’s finest nonfiction, has crafted another masterwork. This is a penetrating portrait of a young man destroyed by malignant influences given free rein in a global hub of capitalist excess. In November 2019, 19-year-old Zac Brettler leapt from the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment in London, falling to his death in the Thames. But this was no straightforward suicide. Brettler, well-off but not rich, had become fixated on opulence, spending nights on social media admiring the “glitzy, mercenary, aspirational culture” embodied by foreign billionaires who’d bought mansions and soccer clubs in his city. Hoping to join their number, he contrived a false identity that led to his undoing. Posing as “Zac Ismailov,” a Russian oligarch’s son, Brettler befriended shady entrepreneurs. At 18, he showed his real father—who works in finance but isn’t “flashy,” Keefe writes—an authentic-looking bank statement for a personal account holding about $1 million. Keefe uncovers details that suggest Brettler jumped to escape from one of his new purported friends, a “violent” extortionist. Keefe might be our sharpest chronicler of the intersection of criminal opportunism and institutional fecklessness. The author finds witnesses and writes of the “bizarre passivity of Scotland Yard,” decimated by budget cuts. He tallies the harm done by decades of deregulation in London, where the financial sector is stacked with “professional facilitators eager to help protect or conceal a dubious fortune.” And he closely observes his real-life characters, sensitively showing the very different ways in which Brettler’s parents processed their pain. This is powerful reporting, a potential classic about the dangerous allure of a city remade as “a twenty-four-hour laundromat for dirty money.” An exemplary account of naïveté, wealth, and menace, impeccably told by a top-notch journalist. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.