Match Fixer

Book excerpt: Match Fixer takes place inside the murky underbelly of Asian Football. The so-called squeaky clean city-state of Singapore plays host to betting syndicates which have for decades fed off the insatiable illegal gambling habits of the local population and in the process made a select few bookies very rich and far too powerful. Neil Humpreys, a former Football correspondent for the national Singapore press, lifts the lid off a previously unexplored - but very real - subject. In his debut novel, corruption is destroying the Beautiful Game in Asia and has spread its tentacles into the UK via spread betting cartels that have already knocked out floodlights and caused chaos in the English Premier League. Against such a background, former West Ham United apprentice striker Chris Osborne arrives in Singapore for a final roll of the dice to get his once promising career back on track. However not even a boyhood spent growing up in the East End prepares him for the crooked shenanigans, bloated former British footballing jetsam and the underground party drugs scene that welcomes him to life in paradise.