London Falling examines the mysterious death of a teen caught up in the Russian underworld.

Albert Llop/NurPhoto/Getty Images; Courtesy of Penguin Random House

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Screenwriters secretly envy book authors for their intellectual prestige and creative control, and authors secretly dream of working in Hollywood. Few writers straddle both worlds with the aplomb of Patrick Radden Keefe. To give you a sense: He found the idea for his new book, London Falling, while on the set for the FX adaptation of his 2018 breakout best-seller, Say Nothing, about the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Or rather, the idea found him. Keefe, an executive producer on the series, was in London, sitting in a director’s chair between setups in a mockup of Scotland Yard, when a guest of the episode’s director started chatting with him. The man told Keefe about a family he knew whose 19-year-old son had leaped to his death into the Thames under mysterious circumstances, and that after he died, they found out he’d pretended to be the son of a Russian oligarch and had been consorting with notorious members of London’s underworld.

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Keefe was hooked. The tragedy, he believed, could be a lens through which to tell the story of how dramatically London, a city he has loved and lived in, had changed in recent years, becoming a magnet for dirty money and a stage for reinvention.

When he got home that night, Keefe googled the incident. There wasn’t a trace of it on the internet — just how he likes it. “I knew that if the family were up for it, this would be my next thing,” he says. “I’m going to clear the decks.”

Rachelle and Matthew Brettler, the parents of Zach Brettler, the boy who jumped, were hesitant at first. But the investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police had led nowhere. They decided Keefe had the required sensitivity to tell the story and the acumen to uncover details lesser sleuths had missed. His track record spoke for itself.

As an author, Keefe has specialized in untangling shadowy networks, whether that’s the Provisional IRA or the Sackler family, whose role in the opioid crisis via their ownership of Purdue Pharma was the subject of his book Empire of Pain. The 2021 best-seller led to his serving as an executive producer on the Netflix miniseries Painkiller, and, more significantly, contributed to the Sacklers having to pay a $7.4 billion settlement to victims. The subtitle of Keefe’s 2022 collection of journalism, Rogues, might as well be printed on his business card: “True stories of grifters, killers, rebels, and crooks.”

London Falling began like most of his six books: as an article for The New Yorker, where Keefe has worked as a staff writer since 2012. And it is ending the way his last two books have — as a TV series. In March, ahead of the book’s April 7 publication, A24 emerged victorious after heated competition for the adaptation rights. At Keefe’s insistence, all serious suitors Zoomed with the Brettlers. “The plan is to proceed not just with the family’s blessing but with their active consultation,” Keefe says.

At 49, the Dorchester, Massachusetts, native has joined the pantheon of celebrity investigative journalists, a sadly dwindling group. His name recognition is such that he was cast as himself in the final scene of HBO’s Industry. “I had way too much fun” acting, he says. “I’ve been joking with a friend of mine at FX who did Say Nothing that I’m going to slip him a headshot.” He could simply hand his friend an outtake from his 2025 campaign for J.Crew, depicting him in a trench coat and suit, coffee cup in hand.

When the music drops out at the coffee shop in the suburbs of New York where we meet, Keefe’s voice lowers to a whisper. It’s unclear whether this is out of consideration for our fellow patrons or out of concern for who might be listening. Given his line of work, and the unsavory people he writes about, it pays to be cautious. It’s for this reason he doesn’t want to reveal which New York suburb his family calls home.

“When I was doing the Sackler book,” he says, “we had a private investigator who was parked in front of our house.” Keefe also has received his share of legal threats and has learned to brush them off. “At a certain point, you get enough of them that you start to be a little less easily intimidated b

Patrick Radden Keefe Is Hollywood’s New Favorite Author