The Fixer: A Financial Thriller

by R. Shankar

The market isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed — by the people who designed it.

Arjun Malhotra was a mathematics genius who believed in efficient markets. Then his mentor hanged himself after losing everything in the 2008 crash — and left a suicide note that said one the market was rigged.

Arjun spent the next seven years learning how to rig it himself.

Forty-seven operations. ₹297 crores. And a prison sentence that taught him the only lesson he'd there's always a bigger operator.

The Fixer is a razor-sharp financial thriller that takes you from the grey markets of Mumbai to CIA war rooms, from Singapore trading floors to a global monetary reset that rewrites the rules for every nation on earth.

Perfect for fans of financial thrillers, market manipulation fiction, Indian crime fiction, espionage thrillers, and readers of Michael Lewis, John Grisham, Vikram Chandra, and Robert Ludlum.

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383 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 23, 2026

About the author

R. Shankar is the author of fiction that cuts across industries — finance, corporate power, aerospace, crime, and the machinery of modern India. He writes about the men who build empires and the ones who burn them down. With years spent studying how industries actually work from the inside, he brings the kind of authenticity that can't be faked.
His standalone novel Dust to Ashes is a multigenerational saga spanning nine decades of ambition, betrayal, and consequence. The Fixer follows a market manipulator across three decades of Indian financial history. Both stand alone as complete stories.
Wingspan and Event Horizon are the first two books of The Ignition Trilogy — a series that follows the men behind India's most ambitious aerospace and defence programme, from the drawing board to the edge of known physics. The third book, Singularity, is forthcoming.
He lives in South India and lets his books do the talking.

Reviews

[Jennifer Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although an interesting concept, there was too much of the finances and not enough of the plot for me. The idea of “fixing” the Indian stock market to make money was great. It was interesting and scary probable. However, most of the time I had no idea what was going on or what they were talking about. If you know about stocks it would be a great read.

[Pathik Om · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging financial thriller that explores the shadowy world of market operators and price manipulation. Fast-paced and thought-provoking. It combines suspense with a fascinating look at how powerful players can influence financial markets behind the scenes.