Patrick Radden Keefe on “London Falling,” His Book About a Teen-Ager’s Mysterious Life and Death
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker. And his last book
bore this subtitle, True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks. And without a doubt, Patrick writes some of the great page turners in nonfiction today. But these stories are not simple entertainments. They connect crime and shady dealings to the biggest issues out there. Say nothing is about political violence under the IRA.
Empire of Pain was about the Sackler family and their role in the opioid epidemic. Two years ago, Patrick wrote in The New Yorker about the death of a teenage boy in London in very mysterious circumstances, and when he began to explore the story, he found the boy's life as mysterious as his death. That story has now been published in Patrick Raddenkief's best-selling book, London Falling. Now, Patrick, the book tells a pretty terrifying story about this kid, Zack Brettler, in a particular environment that's developed in London in the last, I don't know, 20 years or so, the influx of huge amounts of foreign capital into London. How how did you find this story?
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