by Ben Mezrich
First published 2005
John Malcolm operates as a financial gunslinger in Asia's Wild East, where billion-dollar portfolios change hands in the back rooms of brothels and VIP nightclub tables. He and his twenty-something Ivy League colleagues live on adrenaline, sex, and drugs while trading information across the Far East. These hedge-fund cowboys develop their own twisted economic theories and warped moral code. Malcolm navigates a world where extreme wealth meets underground sex and exotic locales. His crew prepares for a single unprecedented deal that will dwarf everything they've done before. The story pulses with the nerve and excess of young financiers who treat massive risk like a game, mixing romance with underground dealings in a landscape where traditional rules don't apply.
Genres: american-fiction, adventure, action, 21st-century
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Asia, Far East
Period: 21st-century
288 pages · Kindle Edition · HarperCollins
Content warnings: drug-use, explicit-sexual-content, violence