{"id":9589,"date":"2026-04-08T13:32:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/9589\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T13:32:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:32:22","slug":"patrick-radden-keefe-london-is-a-24-hour-laundromat-for-dirty-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/9589\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Radden Keefe: \u2018London is a 24-hour laundromat for dirty money\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Radden Keefe\u2019s works take a close interest in the rich, the powerful and the scary. Worryingly, they often take a close interest in him too. While researching Empire of Pain (2021), about the Sackler family\u2019s role in America\u2019s opioid crisis<\/a>, he was tailed by private eyes and threatened with litigation. When he profiled Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n for The New Yorker, the jailed drug lord asked him if he would like to ghost-write his memoir. (Keefe declined.)<\/p>\n

His latest book, London Falling, a mystery and possible-murder story featuring oligarchs, fantasists and gangsters, brought him similar attention. Among his underworld sources is a cheerful villain named Andy Baker, whom Keefe meets after his release from prison. Baker is all smiles, asking after Keefe\u2019s wife and children \u2013 and in the process, identifying them by name.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaker wasn\u2019t threatening my family per se,\u201d Keefe notes in the book. \u201cHe was just letting me know, with a smile of exaggerated courtesy, that he knew who they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happily, all seems well when Keefe, 49, speaks to me via Zoom from his study in New York. He has reason to feel secure in his professional success, having won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Empire of Pain<\/a>, and the Orwell Prize for Say Nothing, his book about the IRA\u2019s Disappeared. He is one of the few non-fiction writers to enjoy any kind of literary celebrity, and his books have real-world influence.<\/p>\n

Empire of Pain<\/a>, for instance, helped to expose the world\u2019s \u201carts-washing\u201d that led to numerous galleries, including the V&A and National Gallery, removing the Sackler name from their premises. Say Nothing<\/a>, which includes claims from ex-IRA members that Gerry Adams was among their ranks, was cited in last month\u2019s High Court lawsuit by IRA bomb victims against the former Sinn F\u00e9in leader. (The case eventually collapsed<\/a> when the claimants withdrew their claim; Adams has always denied membership of the IRA, and maintains this denial today.)<\/p>\n

The worlds he explores may be dangerous ones, but, as he points out, writers can usually exit them. That was not an option, though, for the well-to-do north London family who feature centre-stage in London Falling. Matthew Brettler is a successful financier and his wife, Rachelle, a freelance writer; her father, Rabbi Hugo Gryn, was a regular voice on Radio 4\u2019s Thought for the Day. Such middle-class respectability was not enough, however, for their younger son, Zac, whose education at the \u00a310,000-a-term Mill Hill School saw him rubbing shoulders with the offspring of Russian oligarchs. Much to his parents\u2019 horror, Zac was entranced by this high-rolling world, and the flashy lifestyle associated with it.<\/p>\n

So when Zac, 19, was found dead in November 2019, having jumped from a fifth-floor apartment block in Pimlico overlooking the Thames, suspicion grew about the company he may have been keeping. CCTV showed that he was alone when he leapt from the balcony. The police suspected suicide, but the Brettlers also learnt that Zac had been bluffing his way into dangerous circles, posing as the son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a large fortune. Two men who were in the flat that night were later arrested on suspicion of murder, amid a grisly trail of text messages that suggested Zac was about to be tortured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Radden Keefe\u2019s works take a close interest in the rich, the powerful and the scary. Worryingly, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[4681,3189,4677,61,956,2112,4682,27,2317,4680,4678,330,1797,4679,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-9589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-authors","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-colin-freeman","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-culture","13":"tag-culture-editors-choice","14":"tag-history-books","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-metropolitan-police-service","17":"tag-non-fiction","18":"tag-politics-books","19":"tag-standard","20":"tag-top-story","21":"tag-true-crime","22":"tag-us-content"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116369341956680171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}