A Week in December takes the pulse of London in 2007. It describes a web of characters connected by economics, politics, coincidence, and lust, of whom only a minority are the kind of people who would read A Week in December. Those, however, are the characters of whom the novel most approves – especially those who would endorse its contention that the real villains of London life are not young, confused, misled Muslim fundamentalists, but psychopathic hedge-fund managers who degrade society by their greed.