The Singapore Wink by Ross Thomas is a quick read – or listen if you go the audiobook route like I did (with narrator R. C. Bray). Set in the late 1960s, we find the 33 y/o protagonist/narrator Eddie Cauthorne selling restored classic cars in Los Angeles. Formerly a Hollywood stuntman, he left that life two years previously, shortly after accidentally killing a fellow stuntman in a faux fencing match on a boat in the Singapore harbor. During the stunt, something went horribly wrong and the other guy, Angelo Sacchetti, fell into the harbor and was never recovered. Ever since that moment, Cauthorne has been having nightmares (and daymares – is that a word?) in which he sees Sacchetti giving him a wink as he falls to his death (hence the title of the book). Or at least he thinks he was falling to his death. Two thugs show up at Cauthorne’s work with news that Sacchetti is in fact alive and well. Cauthorne is “requested” to go to Washington to see a guy known as “Charlie the Fixer” who wants Cauthorne’s help in located Sacchetti. Cauthorne doesn’t want to go but the thugs prove to be rather convincing (you know, by doing mafia thug stuff). So, despite his insistence that a visit to Charlie isn’t going to change his mind about helping find Sacchetti, Cauthorne goes to Washington to prevent harm from coming to his friends (including his business partner, the wealthy and mysterious Englishman Richard Trippet).

While in Washington, Cauthorne meets with Charlie and discovers that Sacchetti (who is Charlie’s godson) is blackmailing him. And he (Sacchetti) may have faked his death to avoid getting married (among other reasons). After some additional “encouragement” and some conversations with a middle-aged and perpetually parched FBI agent and the jilted Mafia princess, Cauthorne sets out for Singapore to find Sacchetti and retrieve the stolen documents that are serving to blackmail Charlie.

Singapore becomes the backdrop for the remainder (and bulk) of the story. Here, additional colorful characters are introduced, including a boat captain smuggler who fancies a brothel run by a Hawaiian named Fat Annie, Sacchetti’s new wife – a Chinese woman that Cauthorne refers to as “the Dragon Lady,” and a series of secret service agents and gun-wielding henchmen who create some lovely fight scenes through which Cauthorne must navigate.

I won’t spoil the story, which is a fast and fun one. Whether Cauthorne is able to locate Sacchetti, whether the jilted lover gets her revenge, and whether Fat Annie is indeed fat is up to you to discover on your own. Rather, I will turn to the Singapore setting for the remainder of my review. It’s important to remind that the book is set in the late 1960s, which means the country had been independent of Malaysia for only two or three years. Similarly, Lee Kwan Yew, the man credited with turning Singapore into an advanced nation in a single generation, had yet to become Prime Minister. So, there will clearly not be certain “iconic” aspects of Singapore mentioned, such as the merlion statue (unveiled in 1972), the Marina Bay Sands (open in 2010), or the Supertree Grove (open to the public ~2011). Nevertheless, there are some wonderful aspects of Singapore that are highlighted. For example, upon their arrival to Singapore, Cauthorne and the Mafia princess head to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel to have a Singapore Sling. This is, indeed, the birthplace of the drink. They then had dinner on Bugis Street, describing it as an area lined by two and three-story buildings that despite being only the “size of low-cost American row house” would have upwards of 50 people living inside. There, they ate roast duck and pao (“rice balls with meat and prawns heavily spiced with chilies and sweetened with something that tastes like plum sauce”). Mmm. They also frequently traverse the city in trishaws, a form of transport that was popular at the time but is now mostly just a tourist experience.

We are also provided with some historical information about the location. As the narrator says, “Singapore, which has some aspirations of becoming the New York of Southeast Asia, is fairly new as cities go, having been founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles in 1819. That, if you don’t count what was there before the Japanese leveled it during a raid in 1377, makes Singapore younger than both New York and Washington but older than either Dallas or Denver and likes to think that it offers ‘instant Asia’ to the touring garden club from Rapid City, South Dakota.” Cauthorne also speaks of Singapore having the world’s fifth largest port (“or perhaps busiest, I’m not sure”), a “helluva naval base” (“where the guns were all pointed the wrong way during WWII… towards the sea…”), and provides a brief history of Singapore from its position as a crown colony to a self-governing state under British protection then a member of the Malaysian federation until its current state of a republic. With that, I’ll stop. This book is worth the read, perhaps while sipping a Singapore Sling (though doing so while acknowledging it’s just a tourist drink).