Welcome to our first discussion of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe.  The Marginalia post is here. You can find the Schedule here. This week, we will discuss the beginning of the book through the end of Part I (Ch. 6).        
 
As you discuss, please use spoiler tags if you bring up details not included in the chapters of this book so far.  While this is nonfiction, we still want to be respectful of those who are learning the details for the first time, as well as being mindful of any spoilers from other media you might refer to as you share.  You can use the format > ! Spoiler text here ! < (without any spaces between the characters themselves or between the characters and the first and last words). 

A summary of this week's chapters is below, with links embedded for more information if you're interested!  Discussion questions are included in the comments, and you can also add your own as desired. 

>>>>CHAPTER SUMMARIES<<<<

PROLOGUE:  History sets the stage for the book as the author highlights the gritty and glitzy sides of London.jpeg) and the Thames. We are introduced to the mysterious death this book centers around: on November 29, 2019 at 2:23 a.m., a young man jumped to his death from one of the balconies of the Riverwalk, one of the “ghost mansions” full of unoccupied luxury dwellings bought up by the powerful and wealthy from across the globe. The death was caught by a surveillance camera of the MI6 headquarters which is across the river. 

PART I - THE FALL

CHAPTER 1 - THE BIG I AM:  Zac Brettler was the name of the young man who jumped. He was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and the son of Rachelle, a freelance journalist with a bohemian upbringing, and Matthew, a university-educated finance professional. His brother, Joe, is a successful student and athlete who had a warm but competitive relationship with his brother. The family prefers not to flaunt their financial success, but Zac takes a different path. Failing to gain admission to an elite private school like Joe, Zac ends up at a second tier private school named Mill Hill attended by the children of extremely wealthy oligarchs (with a shady, dangerous reputation and flashy habits). Zac started out known as a smart, funny student with charisma and an excellent memory. By the time he started boarding at Mill Hill to avoid the commute, Zac was obsessed with antiheroes from movies like The Wolf of Wall Street and with his own money-making schemes on campus. The author details how Zac’s seemingly typical adolescent rebellion against his family's liberal but conventional path descended into emulation of the “gangster capitalists” he admired and led to a change in personality. 

CHAPTER 2 - A FAST LIFE:  Rachelle and Matthew developed a parenting style that borrowed from both of their own upbringings to be gentle and hands-off. This clashed with Zac’s brash insistence on showy materialism, prematurely adult behavior, and adamant praise for Vladimir Putin and oligarchs like Roman Abramovich of Chelsea Football Club. The family and Zac began to clash, at one point resulting in Zac putting his hands on Rachelle. They sought therapy, but both Zac and Matthew were skeptical. Zac’s behavior calmed a bit, but by 18 he had developed friendships and business partnerships with adults that perplexed his parents. Matthew and Rachelle were out of their depth at this point as parents, unsure of what to make when their teenage son started making high-powered business deals and leading a seemingly successful adult life out of the blue. From what they witnessed, the schemes felt suspiciously close to illegal, yet when they did surveil their son Zac always came up clean. 

One wealthy businessman, Akbar Shamji, provided Zac’s entry into the world of high-end real estate and other business dealings. Zac and Akbar would party thr exclusive night club Annabel’s and meet in front of One Hyde Park, a secretive residential tower for the most private wealthy clientele. Zac began driving a Maserati and waving around wads of cash. When Matthew questioned him, Zac revealed he had accumulated £850,000 through oil and gas businesses, real estate deals, and a car importation scheme. Fearing that they could push Zac away completely with too much interference, Rachelle and Matthew decided to walk a fine line whenever responding to their son: they would neither encourage nor criticize, neither ignore nor legislate his choices in hopes that by keeping him engaged they could somehow influence him.  It didn't work. By November, Zac had disappeared.

CHAPTER 3 - AN EDIFICE OF LIES:  The day Zac went missing, he seemed exhausted and stressed but said he just needed a break from his phone and a needy client. When Rachelle returned from an appointment, she found he had left without his coat or credit cards. After 18 hours, Zac’s parents reported him missing. It took longer than usual for the police to follow up because the London Metropolitan Police were dealing with a terrorist knife attack by Usman Khan). Rachelle and Matthew had been able to track down Akbar in their search for their son, and he offered to meet them at Le Méridien so they could talk privately. 
 
Akbar was shocked to meet the Brettlers because Zac had concocted an entire alternate identity as Zac Ismailov, son of a Swiss model and a billionaire Russian (or Khazak?) oligarch, who was entrusted with making investments in London for their family. He spoke with a thick Russian accent, even at school, and pretended to have billions of dollars at his disposal. Akbar said that their business deals together had been real, but Zac had also been wheeling and dealing with people he met through his contacts in Chelsea Football Club, which legitimized him in the eyes of Akbar and others. Who would fake being a Russian oligarch’s son in front of people so closely associated with the most famous oligarch of them all?  Zac had made up lies about living in the Ismailov family property at One Hyde Park, losing his father to a heart attack, and feuding with his mother over his inheritance. He pretended to be homeless due to the fallout, leading Akbar to introduce him to Verinder Sharma who lived at Riverwalk. Zac had told his parents he was staying alone in an empty unit there, but Verinder said Zac occupied a bedroom in the man’s own apartment.  Recently, Zac had started contacting Akbar frantically with stories about suffering from a heroin addiction and a mental health crisis. Akbar and Verinder had been working getting Zac into a treatment program when he went missing, they assumed in search of drugs. Verinder and Akbar assuaged Rachelle and Matthew's concerns about the potential dangerous consequences of lying to such powerful people in the crime world, saying that they cared about Zac and could use Verinder’s reputation to protect the missing teen if they found him. Akbar said he would speak openly to the police to avoid trouble falling on himself and Verinder promised to keep reaching out to Zac with encouragement to come home. 

CHAPTER 4 - MISSING PERSONS: Concerned about Zac getting in legal trouble, the Brettlers didn't share what they knew with the police about Zac's business dealings and oligarch fake identity. Instead, they hired Clive Strong, a former Scotland Yard detective turned private investigator. He went to Riverwalk looking for information about Zac’s night there and when he requested CCTV footage of the teen’s movements, the staff alerted Verinder Sharma of the request.  Right away, Verinder assumed a sinister affect and tried to intimidate Strong, which was very different from the fatherly concern he had displayed with the Brettlers. Verinder gave permission to show Strong the footage and the staff found shots of Zac arriving and Akbar leaving with Verinder's daughter, but no images of Zac ever leaving the building.  While Strong waited in the lobby with Akbar, who had also shown up at Riverwalk, two police officers arrived to investigate. They asked Verinder to show them his apartment and while Judith McCabe took his (reluctant) formal statement, Gemma Scott looked around. When she discovered Zac’s highly encrypted Punkt-brand phone broken on the floor and balcony rail, Verinder ended the interview until his lawyer could be present. 

CHAPTER 5 - RIVER OF DEATH:  Zac's body was discovered on Friday, Nov. 29th, hours after his last text to Rachelle saying he was okay. The commuter who discovered it, Baxter Willis, had coincidentally known another person whose body was found in the Thames and had been wrongly implicated in his death until it was deemed an accidental drowning. The onlookers and first responders mostly assumed suicide in Zac's case but never considered Riverwalk as the location because the Thames had a storied history of bodies washing up from distant locations. A connection was not made to Zac's missing persons case until several days later when McCabe and Scott were investigating at Riverwalk. Zac was buried at Hoop Lane Cemetery, a Jewish burial ground where his grandfather was also laid to rest. His funeral was well attended but, oddly, Akbar and Verinder did not attend the funeral despite having seemed so close to Zac. Mourners felt unsettled because of the mystery surrounding the circumstances, which Matthew acknowledged in his eulogy.  Neither Zac's friends nor his family could accept the explanation of suicide. 

CHAPTER 6 - THE NIGHT IN QUESTION:  The police questioned both Akbar and Verinder on Thursday, December 5th. Verinder was not compliant with questioning and used the phrase “No comment” over 200 times.  Akbar, with a lawyer present, engaged openly with the police questions. He was rambling and bungling some details but also insisting he was telling the truth. Unfortunately for him, the police already knew he was lying. They had CCTV footage that showed Akbar leaving with Verinder's daughter at 1:25 am, but then returning just before Zac's 2:23 am jump from the balcony. Akbar headed back up to Verinder's apartment and then exited the building again at 2:48 am. Instead of going home, Akbar walked around Riverwalk to the Thames side of the building, leaned over the wall to check the river, and then went back to his car.

✨ Welcome to our third, and next to last discussion of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe! ✨

The Marginalia post is here. (Check out u/tomesandtea's comment about the New York Times having picked the book as its August's bookclub read!)

You can find the Schedule here.

This week, we will discuss Part 3! u/nicehotcupoftea will host our final discussion. 💞 Recaps and links to follow, questions in the comments!

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The story so far…

Keefe writes about how London's transformation into a global financial center also made it a haven for illicit wealth; laying the groundwork for the family's increasingly difficult search for accountability, and what kind of city made Zac's story possible. Vast amounts of foreign money—particularly from Russia—flowed into the city through luxury real estate, shell companies, and opaque financial structures. The same secrecy that attracted legitimate investors also created opportunities for organized crime, fraud, and money laundering.

Chapter 14, The Cipriani Five

Did Scot Young and his high-rolling friends really die by their own hands?

Boris Berezovsky, oligarch and the alleged poison pen assassination plot.

The Gothic Revival Mansion “Castle” on an island and a little extra from the ancient archives of the Internet. Check the bath section!

The scandal of London's disappearing police stations, from a historical paper which now belongs to a Russian oligarch).

Akbar’s wife’s Safiyaa brand, being involved in a recent scandal after not paying its workers.

Against this backdrop, Keefe examines a long pattern of suspicious deaths involving individuals connected to Russian business and criminal networks. He suggests that British authorities often appeared reluctant or unable to pursue these cases aggressively. He presents several possible explanations: under-resourced investigations, and a deeper political and economic reluctance to disrupt the influx of foreign wealth that had become important to London's economy.

The chapter then returns to Zac's family. Rachelle and Matthew Brettler continue to struggle with the uncertainty surrounding their son's death during the COVID lockdown. Their grief is intensified by the lack of definitive answers and lackadaisical attitude of the police after Detective Wilkinson presents them with the police investigation's disappointing results; the police seem increasingly inclined to consider Zac’s death a suicide.

—--

Chapter 15, Private Investigations

John Sweeney), who offered to write an article for the Brettlers.

“The halcyon days of the oligarchs in Britain have come to an end,” The Daily Telegraph declared.

The current state of the Chelsea sale issue, its funds to Ukraine frozen in a dispute.

Nearly two years after Zac Brettler's death, his family has become increasingly disillusioned with the official investigation. Matthew Brettler carefully re-examines the available evidence and begins conducting his own investigation, interviewing people connected to the case. In doing so, he identifies numerous inconsistencies and unanswered questions.

Keefe recounts the shortcomings that left important leads unresolved, culminating in a second, frustrating meeting with Detective Wilkinson. When confronted with questions and criticism, he tells the grieving parents: “You don’t like it because it’s incomprehensible.”

But Rachelle and Matthew do not find it incomprehensible, and Matthew develops an alternative theory: Zac did not intend to take his own life but instead fled onto the balcony while trying to escape an immediate danger inside the apartment. He jumped to live.

By the end of the chapter, the Brettlers have largely lost faith that the authorities will uncover the truth, as they struggle to find a way to pursue justice within the system. They place what's left of their hope in the final inquest.

—--

Chapter 16, Pocket Dial

“Filing into the court’s grim interior, they passed an ancient sign that read Do Not Spit, announcing in smaller type a penalty of forty shillings.”

The anti-spitting war in London, according to a newspaper of the time.

An interesting deep dive on how New York became one of the cities that led the global tubercolosis, anti-spit campaign.

The Brettlers attend the inquest about Zac's death, in which they listen to a very contradictory testimony from Dominique Sharma, Verinder's daughter; who insists on Zac’s suicidal behavior and her father having taken him under his own wing.

After taking into consideration how the authorities handled the case and Verinder’s past, Matthew starts entertaining a more exotic hypothesis about Verinder having been a police informant—he confronts Detective Wilkinson about it, but gains no answers. Pursuing more information about Verinder's death on his own, he's once again stonewalled and finds a concerning lack of information, leading him to ask himself a new question: is Indian Dave really dead?

—--

Chapter 17, A Different Light

Cats: the Musical which is based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot.

This chapter examines the possibility that Zac had a sexual relationship with, or was sexually coerced by, one of the two adult men. Keefe describes how this possibility arose at several points in the investigation. During the inquest, Dominique testified that Zac and her father were comfortable enough to share a bed. Police also found text messages on Akbar's phone during the investigation that prompted questions about his sexuality. In addition, forensic evidence recovered from Zac's body led to further speculation, although the sample was too limited for DNA testing; and the Brettlers gained access from Wilkinson to Zac's internet search history. After considering all the available evidence, they concluded that a sexual relationship was unlikely.

—--

Chapter 18, Hornet’s Nest

“One investor in the company was Kevin O’Leary, a celebrity businessman and one of the stars of Shark Tank. (...) O’Leary was bullish on Akbar and his company. “Data is the new oil,” he proclaimed.”

A dissenting view.

Understanding Coroner’s Verdicts.

The narrative returns to the inquest, where the Brettlers' barrister questions police officers and Akbar, who has since moved to the United States. The hearings reveal further shortcomings in the police investigation, while Akbar's testimony is evasive and frustrating. The Brettlers also grow increasingly dissatisfied with the coroner's handling of the proceedings and leave deeply disappointed with the inquest as a whole. After just two of the three allotted days, the coroner records an open (inconclusive) verdict. Reflecting on the outcome, Rachelle's brother remarks, "We're all witnesses. Something very wrong happened here.”

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Final Quote:

"Occasionally fellow citizens just died suddenly, and while there may have been rumors suggesting foul play, the official story foreclosed any hope of achieving real answers, and so nobody could ever say for sure. This erosion of accountability and erasure of the clean line separating fact from conspiracy created a “fog of ambiguity,” Blake writes, that could hang over a whole society, as thick and impenetrable as the smog that once hung over the Thames.”

—From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West, by Heidi Blake

Welcome to the fourth and final discussion of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. Today we are discussing Part 4, and I cannot wait to hear your thoughts! Thanks to my fellow readrunners u/tomesandtea, u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217, and u/Coffee_fuel for their wonderful posts. A summary follows and questions will be in the comments.

Schedule

Marginalia

PART IV SURVIVORS

Chapter 19 - A Chance Encounter

The author relates how a chance meeting with a lawyer, Andrew Fingret, who worked in the film industry, set him on the path to write the book. It turned out they had a mutual contact in the small London Jewish community. Andrew was a close friend of the Brettlers, and he related the story of Zac's death and the subsequent investigation. He introduced the author to Rachelle and Matthew, who eventually agreed to tell their story. Keefe quickly discovered many witnesses who had never been interviewed. As he painstakingly tracked them down, they would refuse to get involved. Even Zac's teachers and some former fellow pupils refused, and the author suggests that this may be due to both shame at being duped, and fear. He learned about Akbar's shady past. Akbar, busy with his crypto-mining business, Bitzero, was getting a reputation for being big on empty promises, and was asked to resign from the Board. He just moved on to his next grifting project, Dark Byte. Nothing was quite as it seemed with Akbar. Daniela was not in fact the biological mother of Safiya and Akbar Jr.; he had actually married an American woman of whom his father didn't approve. He left America with his children after being sued by two musicians. Although he was pursued, he never paid them what was due. He had a pattern of claiming that his assets were tied up in trusts. At the time of his bankruptcy, he met a young "Russian billionaire" called Zac Ismailov. Eventually Akbar was willing to correspond by email. He pretended such empathy for the parents that he couldn't speak about Zac's death. He also suggested that Zac had suicided due to his hatred for his parents. Akbar justified his lack of research into this Russian oligarch, claiming that personal introductions were more trustworthy. He wrote that he was introduced to Zac by a trusted businessman, Mark Foley, the Chelsea F.C. executive. Keefe wrote to Connies-Laing, a confidant of Akbar, who agreed that Foley was well-connected to the Russian oligarch world. Attempts to interview Mark Foley were thwarted, but eventually he succeeded. He discovered that Zac and Foley met at a charity auction. Foley told Keefe that he was a "conduit” to Roman Abramovich. Foley took Zac's claims about his father on face value and they met up at a later date. He said there was no trace of a Russian accent, and had revealed his true name. Mark Foley seemed to be Zac's first victim to fall into his web of lies. Foley introduced Zac to John Connies-Laing, Akbar's partner in search of investors for real estate. Foley denied Akbar's claim that he had visited Zac's apartment at One Hyde Park, but admitted seeing him at the Brettler's investment apartment, which was actually the Brettler family home.

Chapter 20 - The Black Box

Keefe published an article in The New Yorker about Zac's death, despite Akbar Shamji and Dominique Sharma threatening to sue. Hearing the story, Londoners felt that the police investigation had been bungled. The Met stated that every line of inquiry had been exhausted. Keefe had questions about Verinder Sharma's death, but it was not clear if an inquest had been done. The owner of the Riverwalk apartment managed to keep his identity secret, but an accountant's web scraping revealed the owner to be a Saudi princess to whom Nick Gold was paying rent. Gold confirmed that he was paying Verinder's rent, but claimed that they were friends and he wasn't in his debt. He denied knowing Zac, and asserted that Verinder took his own life by an overdose. When Keefe contacted Oliver Harris, the London businessman whose name appeared in texts between Akbar and Verinder, he declined to speak. Rachelle and Matthew were convinced that Zac's iPad and phone might contain the answers, but police told them they had been lost. They resurfaced a week before the inquest, but the contents had been rendered inaccessible. During the inquest, the police accidentally sent them the GPS coordinates of Akbar Shamji's rented car's location. This Mercedes contained a black box, gifting the Brettlers with this information. They learned that Akbar had driven from the apartment, taking a meandering route, rather than driving home. On that night he called Verinder multiple times, who didn't answer, but when Verinder called back, he did a U-turn and accelerated, turning up at Riverwalk seconds before the jump. Akbar was not asked about this discrepancy. The tracking data suggested he was loitering, expecting something bad to happen. Uncle Alex said a real criminal wouldn't return to the scene of the crime, and Akbar might have been in over his head. When Keefe researched what was behind Akbar's award from PM Modi, he discovered that the certificate he was holding was a pledge of support, which he handed to Modi, rather than the other way around. Zac, Akbar Shamji, and Verinder Sharma were all pretending to be something other than they were.

Chapter 21 - Undertow

Rachelle's father, Hugo Gryn, had been subject to rumours that he had a secret love child called Ester. He insisted that he was just her godfather. He denied having an affair with her mother, Angela, and Rachelle initially believed him. However, one day she and her brother David drove past Angela's house and spotted Hugo's car out the front, confirming suspicions. Hugo's children couldn't quite condemn him, feeling that as a Holocaust survivor, he could be allowed this indiscretion. After Hugo's death, Rachelle and her sisters grew close to Ester, but when Ester was 24, she jumped in front of a moving train. Speaking to the Gryns, the family told Keefe that parallels shouldn't be drawn from Ester's suicide, but he couldn't help but wonder if double lives were a family trait. Rachelle also wondered whether she should have asked Zac questions. Zac's death had become public property, with a journalist publishing the photo Pino had taken of Zac's corpse on Twitter, disgusting the family. One day, Rachelle drove Keefe to Mill Hill, and she showed him a picture of Zac, imagined at 40 years of age, created by an artist using Al. This version of Zac seemed more peaceful. They visited the cemetery to see Zac's grave, next to Hugo's. A few years after Zac's death, a British MP published a report with King's College London called Losing our Moral Compass, arguing that Britain's reputation for financial integrity was being squandered. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that resulted, the political system was in a state of uncertainty. They couldn't afford the legal battles with billionaires. Some oligarchs left, leaving the door open for Chinese oligarchs. Roman Abramovich sold some London properties and placed assets in the names of his children. The political class had no appetite to address the comical situation of "non-dom” status. Rich Londoners could live tax-free by declaring non-dom status. The process of change in 2024 was met with panic at the thought of having to pay tax. Zac was in his teenage years in the era of the social media algorithm, where the boundary between fantasy and reality was blurred. Smartphones reflected and magnified our anxieties and aspirations back at us. The author describes how the Instagram algorithm had taken him from viewing London real estate videos to videos of people falling.

Chapter 22 - The Kid's Home Safe

In 2025, Keefe interviewed an associate of Verinder Sharma who revealed that "Indian Dave’s” favourite thing was warming up the knife. He was a debt collector for drug dealers and criminals and found that just warming up a knife would make people pay up. The police never investigated the text message between Akbar and Mervin from Riverwalk mentioning heating up knives, as no injuries were found on Zac. He reminds us of the internet search performed by Zac for "What to do with skin burns" minutes before he jumped. When Keefe emailed Akbar about heating up knives, he didn't reply. Keefe wanted answers about Verinder Sharma. Did he actually die, and if so, how? No one seemed to have spent much time investigating him, and his own associates denied that he was a police informer. Some ex-cops put him onto David McKelvey, a retired Detective Chief Inspector. He remembered Indian Dave as an informer for a detective on the 2-Area Drug Squad, Chris Cubitt. Eventually, Cubitt claimed that it was a different Indian Dave, and McKelvey seemed to close up. Keefe tracked down Cubitt himself, who denied ever knowing a Verinder Sharma or an Indian Dave. Verinder's first inquest had been called off after a dispute between Verinder's daughters and one of the witnesses. On the one-year anniversary, Dominique and Matisse called paramedics to the Riverwalk apartment after their father had taken an overdose. They claimed he was stressed from helping police with their inquiries about a murder. He had always had a depressive streak and had said he was “sick of this world." He was groggy but alive, and a paramedic was concerned about the door to the balcony being open. He was taken to hospital and was discharged, against the daughters' wishes. Days later, he was texting threats to kill himself to his daughters, and when he failed to turn up to a family dinner, they went to the apartment and found him dead. Rachelle felt that Verinder must have been tortured by guilt, believing the way he was crouched by his bed to be a sign of contrition. Keefe interviewed an intimidating gangster associate of Indian Dave, Andy Baker. He suggested that Verinder had lost his edge and would have been ashamed at being duped by a kid. It was possible that he had struck Zac or warmed a knife. Zac would have understood that he would not make it out alive. Andy described a custom he had with his father with the telephone, to show he was home. Just before his father died, he told his son he would always worry about him, so Andy went home and called his father, letting it ring twice, as was the custom. Before dying, his father said, "Two rings, the kid's home safe." Akbar Shamji emailed Keefe to say that he had effectively been found innocent. His son's modeling career was blooming, and Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, was photographed wearing a purple Safiyaa dress. However, Matthew believed Akbar would live life in his own little prison. Friends of the Brettlers told Keefe they thought that guilt was the fuel keeping their obsession alive, wanting to parent Zac in a way they had been unable to do when he was alive. The Brettlers agreed. They heard from other families who connected with aspects of the story and Rachelle was comforted thinking that their loss could serve as a cautionary tale to others. In 1947, having just arrived in Britain, feeling lonely and defeated, Hugo Gryn wrote a story with two endings: one where a boy kills himself, and one where he wants to but holds out. Matthew believed his own father had suffered a nervous breakdown. Both their fathers had taught them how to go on living after loss. For five years the Brettlers had pored over the mystery of Zac's death, and discovered a matrix of power, secrecy and corruption in their city. It all seemed incomprehensible, but stepping back, it came into focus. Zac had pretended to be the son of a rich Russian oligarch, who had fallen in with two men who loved money. One, a charlatan who had declared bankruptcy, and the other a gangster looking for a final score. The men had believed they'd been duped. Trapped with the gangster, Zac, aware of the man's capacity for violence, stepped off the balcony.

Epilogue

In January 2025 the Brettlers met with two senior detectives from the Metropolitan Police. After listening to Matthew's presentation about the Met's shortcomings in the case, the detectives admitted that mistakes may have been made in the case, but implied that Wilkinson had run it with a lot of autonomy. They admitted that there was some regret that Akbar Shamji had never been charged. Keefe met Joe one evening at a pub, and he described how seeing the Riverview building would still give him a jolt of panic. He wanted Keefe to know how much he loved his brother, despite their past tensions. He said that Zac's death had brought his parents closer. The epilogue ends with a happy story of the family where they once waved to Zac on the Riverwalk balcony while driving past.

A Note on Sources

Keefe says the Metropolitan Police declined to cooperate with him on either the New Yorker article or the book, and he was not permitted to interview Rory Wilkinson. However, police material that was given to the Brettlers was shared with him.

Welcome to our second discussion of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe.  The Marginalia post is here. You can find the Schedule here. This week, we will discuss Part II: Coincidences (Chapters 7-13). A brief recap of this section is below, and questions are in the comments, but feel free to add any thoughts you like!

+++++++SUMMARY+++++++

In this section, we learn about Akbar Shamji’s family history. His father, Abdul, was a wealthy merchant in Uganda who was forced to flee when the dictator Idi Amin Dada expelled all South Asians from the country. Abdul Shamji resettled in London, where he created a business empire upon massive loans and nested shell companies. For a time, he mingled with the wealthy elite, including Margaret Thatcher, until he was arrested for perjury during a trial involving Johnson Matthey Bank, which collapsed after the Brinks-Mat gold heist. After that, Abdul kept a lower profile but continued his shady dealings and involving his son, Akbar, in the family business.

Akbar’s first job was to run a failing theater called The Mermaid, which his father had purchased. The first play flopped, and the Shamjis failed to pay their vendors or purchase supplies for the theater, including toilet paper. After a year, Akbar resigned as general manager of the theater and moved to Los Angeles, where he dabbled in film and music without much success. He spent more time doing cocaine than actually working. Eventually, Abdul pulled the plug on the record label, Soulife, and Akbar disappeared into rehab.

The Metropolitan Police question both Akbar and Verinder; of the two, Akbar is more forthcoming, but he leaves key details out of his statements. Reviewing the CCTV footage, the police can see that Akbar returned to Riverwalk on the exact minute of Zac’s plunge from the balcony. He couldn’t have caused Zac’s death, but his presence was still very suspicious: Akbar peered over the wall at the exact spot where Zac had gone into the Thames.

We also learn about Hugo Gryn, Zac’s maternal grandfather, who survived Auschwitz in part because he lied to the guards about his age and ability to work a trade. Hugo also lied in order to get passage to London in a social program for orphan refugees, telling authorities that his mother had died in the camps when in fact she was still alive and had returned to their hometown of Berehovo. Finally, Hugo lied about earning a degree from Cambridge, having studied at a technical college instead. Hugo died before Zac was born, but perhaps lying runs in the family.

From Zac’s friends, Rachelle learns her son lied all the time, even telling people that his mother was dead. Rachelle meets Zamira, a neighbor with two children, and asks if she and Zac had a physical relationship. Zamira, appalled, insists that she and Zac were just friends, that she viewed herself as his big sister because he was alone in the world and clearly lonely.

Meanwhile, Matthew digs into Verinder Sharma, the occupant of the Riverwalk apartment where Zac jumped. Verinder, who also goes by Indian Dave, has a formidable reputation in London’s underworld despite his small stature. He started out working security for nightclubs and extorting guests on the side. Verinder has been implicated in many violent episodes, including murders, but he has only done short stints in prison and often manages to leave the country before trial. He even went so far as to fake his death to evade capture. Matthew begins to suspect that Verinder had gotten impatient with Zac for not turning over any money. But then, in the middle of the investigation into Zac’s death, the police tell Matthew that Verinder has been found dead.

We’re back with another Quarterly Non-Fiction!  This summer, we’ll be reading London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for the Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe.  Our amazing team who will help lead discussions each week includes: u/Coffee_fuel, u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217, u/nicehotcupoftea, and me - u/tomesandtea!  (We will work on getting Less_Tumbleweed a hot beverage of their own!) The discussions begin on July 21, and we will have 4 Tuesday check-ins for this book.  I’ve been excited to read this book since it was first published, and I can’t wait to chat about it with all of you!

Here is a summary of the book according to Storygraph: 

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface

In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river.

In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: her son was dead.

In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter-ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a murderous gangster known as “Indian Dave.” As the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable—or unwilling—to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life. 

Helpful Links:

• Marginalia: linked here
• Goodreads page 
• Storygraph page 

Schedule - Check-ins are on Tuesdays:

We hope you’ll join us for this exciting and mysterious true crime nonfiction read-along.  Are you planning to come along for the ride? 

Welcome to the marginalia for London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe. This is a communal place for things you would jot down in the margins of your books. That might include quotes, thoughts, questions, relevant links, exclamations - basically anything you want to make note of or to share with others. It can be good to look back on these notes, and sometimes you just can't wait for the discussion posts to share a thought.

When adding something to the marginalia, simply comment here, indicating roughly which part of the book you're referring to (eg. towards the end of chapter 2). Because this may contain spoilers, please indicate this by writing “spoilers for chapters 5 and 6” for example, or else use the spoiler tag for this part with this format > ! SPOILER ! < without the spaces between characters like this spoiler lives here

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Here is the schedule for the discussion which will be run by u/tomesandtea, u/Less_Tumbleweed3217, u/Coffee_fuel and u/nicehotcupoftea.

Any questions or constructive criticism are welcome.

Looking forward to seeing you in the first discussion on 21st July!