If love and passion can prove so brittle against greed and ambition, what hope for truth and integrity?
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Overwrought and tormented by a career-threatening investigation progressing in London, investment banker, Marcus Flint, seeks solace at a remote Swiss hotel – there is much more at stake – if sinister episodes from his past in Singapore become exposed, they will destroy not just his career but rip apart his family and his life.
Blind to the real reasons for his absence, his wife, Emma, is confused but keen to help, not least because Marcus rescued her from her own traumas years ago. As the London review threatens to turn global, disaster looms. Marcus feels compelled to write to Emma to explain his actions – the ripple effects of greed, ambition and deceit cascading out of control, ultimately confessing to what he has done – his ‘darkest trade’.
It’s a letter he hopes he never has to send.​
Published 28 November 2024
About Alexander
Alexander has worked for many years as a senior executive and advisor in financial services, predominantly in investment banking.
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Having observed a world with seemingly increasingly questionable dynamics, both in politics and business, his debut novel, Dark Pools, was inspired by a desire to share some of his own experiences and insights into corporate and political behaviours - behaviours with their underlying motivations and sometimes apparent contradictions - in the hope that understanding these contexts will allow those at earlier stages in their careers to manage and maintain their own ethics and integrity while working with those who so easily sacrifice theirs on the altars of ego and ambition.
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At the same time he wanted to shed light on the sometime hypocrisy of a society that judges actions in hindsight and without context, and to provide a more realistic and nuanced, albeit still somewhat unflattering, window onto life on the trading floor than the stereotypical banker-bashing portrayals of norm.
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At its heart, though, Dark Pools is a fictional multi-layered thriller embedded with passion, romance and betrayal.