Book excerpt: Liam Carroll's debut novel, Slippery, shines a blowtorch on the fundamental truths of the finance industry and the hedonistic world of the expatriate lifestyle in Southeast Asia. Flynn James, a young man from the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly, previously content to live his life as a physiotherapist and surfer on Australia's east coast, is awakened to the big bonuses on offer in the trading game. He abandons health sciences, embraces the greed is good mantra and manages to flare past thousands of candidates in a Geneva simulation trading day exercise, ushered through the shady doors of a fiercely private Swiss commodities trading company and set on the path to oil trading superstardom. Based in Singapore and Shanghai, Flynn learns the ropes of commodities dealing at breakneck haste. With the arrival of his first seven-figure bonus, the glossy veneer of his overpaid world crumbles, setting the stage for a shattering finale. Much more than another mere exposé on the world of trading, Slippery is an adventure/thriller. It explores the gritty realities of successful commerce in the corporate maelstrom of Southeast Asia, the inevitable moral compass decimation when you place money above all else and is done so with a side-splitting, bitter self-loathing, terminal awareness. You won't be able to put it down.