Patrick Radden Keefe … ‘I think there are some pretty malign forces, particularly affecting boys, in adolescence.’ Photograph: Maria Spann/The Guardian

The big interview

A gangster, a bogus inheritance and a dead 19-year-old: the mystery Patrick Radden Keefe couldn’t ignore

This article is more than 1 month old

Anna Moore

When Zac Brettler jumped to his death in London, the coroner recorded an open verdict, admitting: ‘I don’t know what happened.’ The acclaimed author of Say Nothing and, now, London Falling, talks about his search for answers

Anna Moore

Tuesdahy 7 April 2026

In the summer of 2023, the American writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was in London for the filming of Say Nothing, the television adaptation of his much-lauded, much-awarded account of a Troubles murder. It was there, on set, that Keefe got talking to a visitor, a friend of the director, who happened to tell Keefe about friends of his, the Brettlers, a London family who had experienced something tragic, strange and terrible.