Novelist Gord Hume brings ‘Singapore Bling’ to the USA

Canada’s Gord Hume had a lengthy career as an advisor, commentator and public speaker on important civic issues – municipal government, sustainable urban development, cultural planning, that sort of thing.

He wrote books on these subjects, and served four terms on the London, Ontario City Council.

Before that, he was in broadcasting and journalism for many years, twice winning “Broadcaster of the Year” and founding what became the country’s largest independent community newspaper.

These days, he lives in a St. Pete Beach condo and writes funny stories about people who don’t exist.

St. Petersburg Press has published Hume’s Singapore Bling, a laugh-out-loud novel about a Florida sheriff and his fish-out-of-water girlfriend, a New Yorker, attempting to thwart a pair of con artists who’ve infiltrated a beach condo community and made off with a bunch of money.

The officer’s name is LeRoy Perkins – his friends call him Perk – and she’s Samantha Summers. Perk’s personable dog Rosie is part of the inner circle.

Singapore Bling is the third in a five-books-and-counting series – they’re all subtitled A Samantha and the Sheriff Adventure. Published only in Canada, thus far, they’ve all been popular but haven’t had wide distribution.

Hume, Samantha and Sheriff Perkins are making their U.S. debut with Singapore Bling.

Hume chose this one for his American introduction because, he believes, it encapsulates the whole Samantha and the Sheriff universe. “I just thought this was a fun story, and a great representation of what I’m trying to do in the books,” he says. “Which is have some fun, bring people some laughs and a little political satire, and social commentary once in a while.”

Hume isn’t a full-time Pinellas resident; he and his partner Carol are snowbirds, spending six months on St. Pete Beach each year. “I’d written seven nonfiction books about city-building,” he says, “and I needed something new in my life. So I started to develop the idea of a novel set on the Gulf coast. I was amused by some of the dive bars I’d gone to, and the characters you meet, and some of the crazies you see on the street.”

That was enough to get his creative juices going in overdrive. “During our first month down here, around eight years ago, we rented a condo in Madeira Beach,” he explains. “And I became fascinated watching the social environment around the swimming pool.”

In particular: “You see it in pretty much all the condos along the coast; there’s this group of women who run the bloody place.”

Samantha has a condo in a place called Sapphire Blue, where the alpha women (Hume refers to them as the Wives) sit around the pool, drinking wine and gossiping.

Samantha and her friends Kim (newly elected to the Port Manatee City Council, with Samantha running her campaign) and Samira (an orthopedic surgeon) also gather at the pool, separate from the chattering wives but also drinking wine (there’s a lot of drinking in Singapore Bling), laughing a lot and talking about loftier things.

Each side views the other with skepticism.

Trying to minimize the alcoholic intake of the Wives was like cheering for the NY Mets. It was difficult, it aroused derision, and it held very little promise of reward. It was about as smart as buying takeout sushi from a gas station convenience store.

Into the mix waltzes sexy blonde Ashley and her mysteriously-mustachio’d husband Massey. In short order, they’ve convinced the Wives that the can let them in on the ground floor of the investment opportunity of a lifetime. The Wives, who have zero interest in letting their clueless husbands in on this windfall, pool their own money and hand over a half million dollars.

“I got intrigued by the whole bitcoin cyber-currency thing, says Hume, confessing: “Because I never understood a bloody thing about it – and to this day I don’t understand it. But it was obvious that there were a bunch of people getting conned. And losing their money, and everything else. So that kind of gave me something to grab onto.”

Samira somehow gets conned into handing $1 million over to Ashley and Massey, which makes it personal for her pal Samantha.

The scam artists eventually end up in Singapore, with Samantha and the Sheriff in hot pursuit. And there the story comes to an adrenalized conclusion equal parts mystery, mirth – and madness.

With five of these books under his belt, Hume knows his characters so well they’re almost real to him. “I remember sitting around the pool here with some of the people in our condo,” he reports. “The books are very popular down here.

“And one of the women said ‘Why don’t you have Samantha say …?’ And I immediately snapped ‘Samantha would not do that.’ I have no idea where it came from, but I just knew that wasn’t Samantha.”

Singapore Bling is available from Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg Press and Amazon.