ONE LONDON DAY by C.C. Humphreys – Technothrillers, Serial Killers, Contemporary Urban Fiction

A good thriller should be like the best-boxed chocolate sampler: the ones that not only offer you a great variety of tastes but allow you to sample and resample the chocolates you’ve discovered.

C.C. Humphreys’ noir thriller One London Day resembles that box of chocolates. The story takes you from delicious to delicious bits, round and round, until you have sampled everything and everyone once, twice, or even three times until you understand the full impact of this brilliantly dark – based on a true story thriller.

It begins, deceptively, with Mr. Phipps, who has a taste for the dark side of life. He’s a handsomely compensated and frequently used assassin. The first victim on this day will be Joseph Severin, a well-heeled real estate manager, married, and prominent member of London’s Jewish community. Severin keeps a double set of books in handwritten form—no computers, please—for a financial group which calls itself the Shadows, a name picked from comic books. The Shadows, a well-to-do collection of white-collar men, fund various illegal enterprises, the details of which Severin cleverly encodes in his books. When the Shadows discover Severin dabbling in their investments, it becomes clear; the bookkeeper knows too much. The Shadows move Severin from the credit side of the ledger to the debit side, so to speak. Goodbye, Mr. Severin.

Meanwhile, Severin meets a stunning woman named Lottie.

She’s a beautiful, sexy, for-hire pianist, and Severin impulsively offers a month’s free rent in one of his unoccupied flats. Of course, the offer comes with fringe benefits if only Severin can get over the fact that he’s about to break his marriage vows.

Lottie, of course, has her own story. She’s been dating a rising young black actor, Patrick, whom she loves. But Patrick loves kinky sex and arranges for a Russian hooker, Sonya, to join him and Lottie for a delicious threesome. Despite the pleasures of the moment, Lottie can’t stop thinking about Severin.

Sonya’s a highly paid hooker in London who needs to raise enough money for her daughter’s much-needed operation back in Moscow. She’s almost raised enough money to leave the escort business altogether and take care of her daughter.

Enter Bernard, who lost his wife and hires Sonja to hold and comfort him, not for sex. There’s somewhat of a complication here because Bernard is a member of the Shadows. Sebastien, another one of the Shadows, also craves an evening with Sonya.

The Shadows want Mr. Severin removed, but they need to recover Severin’s incriminating accounting books. Enter Mr. Phipps, who must collect the books that seem to have wound up with Lottie. However, recovering the books may not be as easy as he thinks.

C.C. Humphreys develops his story like a game of Mousetrap, requiring readers to pay close attention to every detail.

Characters and plot points circle, again and again, each time adding to a fuller picture of what happened on this one day. Greed and comeuppance play out in today’s London from someone who knows it well. Humphreys’ craftsmanship is unmistakable.

Read One London Day if you enjoy present-day noir thrillers. Read it if you enjoy well-crafted writing. Read it if you want a few hours of fun entertainment. But above all, just read it. You won’t be disappointed.