Invisible Trade is a ground-breaking book on Singapore's sex industry, particularly high-class international prostitutes posing as "escorts" and catering to a global clientele with kinky tastes and money to burn.

The bestseller and a US government report on alleged trafficking of Asian women here have turned the spotlight on a thriving business in a city-state better known overseas as a prudish, strictly controlled society.

Singapore last week rejected a US State Department report that it had a "significant trafficking problem" involving women and children, and no national action plan to tackle it. Indignant officials challenged Washington to prove its findings.

Contrary to its prim image, Singapore accepts prostitution as a legitimate profession as long as it happens behind closed doors and between adults.

"Governments around the world through the ages have tried to eradicate prostitution and brothels, but without success. As in many other countries, we adopt a pragmatic approach," a spokesman for the Singapore police told AFP.

Foreign women working voluntarily in the sex trade cannot be arrested unless they are caught offering their services out in the street or violate immigration and other laws.

And since the legal age of sexual consent here is 16 years, any girls in the industry between 16 to 18 years are not classified as child prostitutes in Singapore, as they would be in other countries.

"We confine prostitution to certain areas, and take enforcement action against prostitutes who solicit in public, and pimps who force women into prostitution," the police spokesman added.

Invisible Trade was written by Singaporean author Gerrie Lim, a former US-based music journalist, who interviewed call girls, agents and other players in the sex trade.

The book opens with an account of a regular customer who flies in from Tokyo and phones an escort agency from Changi airport to ask for his favorite Mongolian woman, who charges US$350 an hour, to be sent to a luxury hotel.

Once inside, after sipping expensive wine and undressing himself, "Philip" orders "Jasmine" to squeeze his neck between her jeans-clad legs while he plays with himself. It is over in 10 minutes and no intercourse takes place.

The rest of the book contains other graphic tales of Singapore after dark.

With 800,000 foreign workers and professionals, many of them men living on their own, plus seven million visitors per year, Singapore boasts a multi-tiered sex industry that caters to a wide range of budgets.

Apart from high-class Singaporean and foreign escorts, Invisible Trade also delved into the lower end of the sex industry.

The Geylang district on the east coast has brightly-lit and clearly identifiable brothels with licensed Asian prostitutes catering to local men and foreign workers.

Blonde prostitutes from Eastern Europe have also made their appearance in Geylang and other parts of Singapore, as in other major Asian cities.

Massage parlors operate from hotels and commercial buildings across Singapore, and it is an open secret that some karaoke bars with private rooms offer a lot more than bad singing.

For expatriates and travellers, a building along swank Orchard Road nicknamed "Four Floors of Whores" is the place to meet women for hire at nightclubs, where terms are negotiated over drinks for eventual trysts elsewhere in the city.

And for those seeking more discreet liaisons, "escorts" are available at hourly rates. More than 100 escort agencies are listed in the Singapore telephone directory, offering male and female companionship.

Invisible Trade has now shone a new light on this thriving business.

"It has sold beyond our expectations," said Philip Tatham, managing director of Lim's publisher Monsoon Books. "People are interested in what's going on."

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