London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe is one of those books. You know the kind? The kind that the author is on Fresh Air, but you think it sounds boring? But people you know and trust tell you it's really good despite the fact that you know you think it sounds boring? 

Well, hey, you should LISTEN TO YOUR OWN FEELINGS. This book is not my jam. Maybe it's your jam, particularly if you want to hear about the history of London for half an hour before you even meet a human being. This is the kind of book that thinks it's important that you know the history of the great-grandparents of a random person you'll only hear about sort of tangentially. This is the kind of book about a pathological liar who somehow gets into trouble and you're supposed to feel sympathy for him. This is the kind of book about bad people doing bad things and their only motivation is money. Now maybe that's interesting for some people, but it's not interesting for ME. 

Sort of rich kid pretends to be the son of a rich Russian oligarch, gets mixed up with mobsters and the drug trade, and ends up jumping off a balcony into the Thames. His parents try to figure out what went wrong (I dunno? you never parented him?) and all sorts of things about the underworld of London are discovered. 

Do you enjoy reading about wealthy entitled people being wealthy and entitled? Do you enjoy stories about thugs and mobsters? Do you enjoy it when entire judicial systems just shrug about thugs and mobsters because, hey, they're rich and they bring in a lot of money to the economy? Do you enjoy parents justifying how they didn't parent? 

It appears as if a lot of people DO enjoy Keefe's long digressions into history and rich people behaving badly because this book has a 4.29 on Goodreads. Listen, you do you. 2/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was a strange sensation, to move around St. John's Wood, picking up groceries or stopping for a cup of tea in a cafe, and knowing that there might be people around them, people from their own community, who had connections to Verinder Sharma, or to other elements of London's criminal subculture and who perhaps knew more than they did about their son's death. (Chapter 15)

I think this is profound, actually. When something big happens in your life (a new baby, a new job, a death in the family, discovering your son was a drug dealer who jumped off a balcony fleeing from a Russian mobster), it's CRAZY how the rest of the world just goes on, isn't it? 

I ended up speaking with dozens of former law enforcement officials, but never succeeded in locating anyone who nurtured the kind of Ahab like obsession I had in mind. (Chapter 22)

Moby-Dick!!! I KNOW THIS ONE. 

What I looked up: 

Candy and Candy apartment (Chapter 3) - Candy and Candy (now known as Candy London) is a world-famous ultra-prime interior design and property development company founded by British brothers Nick and Christian Candy. I thought this was just some British idiom I'd never heard. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

bowler hats (Chapter 2)

top hatted mascot of the game (Chapter 7)

top hat (Chapter 11)

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Have you read this? Did you think it was super boring? Do you like how I'll fit Moby-Dick into anything I can? Do you think I'll still be so proud of reading Moby-Dick in a decade?