Patrick Radden Keefe on “London Falling” and his Boston Roots

Um, the main character, Zach Bretler, um, how did you first learn about him and decide you wanted to dig into his story?

I came to it in a weird way.

I was living in London in the summer of 2023.

I had written this book, Say Nothing, that came out in 2019, and we were turning that book into a limited series, which is now on Hulu.

So I was producing the series.

I moved my family over to London, and I was on set one day, and I got to chatting with a stranger, a guy I hadn't met before.

He was a visitor to the set just that day.

I have a tendency as a reporter to start conversations with strangers.

Um, you know, much to my children's embarrassment, I'm always-

[laughs]

I get in the back of an Uber and start interrogating the Uber driver.

Um, and I did on this occasion just start chatting with the guy, and told him what I did, that I'm a journalist with The New Yorker, that I write these kind of big investigative narrative pieces.

And he said, "I might have a story for you."

Hmm.

And what the guy said was, "There's a family here in London who I'm very close with, who in 2019 had this tragedy.

They lost a child.

They lost their son, Zach.

He was 19 years old, and he died in mysterious circumstances.

He went off the balcony of this luxury apartment building overlooking the Thames, and he died in the river.

And after he died, his parents," whose names were Matthew and Rochelle, "made this startling discovery.

They learned that unbeknownst to them, their teenage son had been living this double life, and that he'd been moving around London at age 18, 19, pretending that he was the son of a billionaire Russian oligarch," which he wasn't.

Hmm.

"And he got mixed up with some pretty dicey people, and he wound up dead." And the guy had basically said that much to me when I knew, if the family will talk to me, this is a story I have to write.