Jesus Christ. I found one.' These words are blurted over the phone to Constable Snowy Lane, who is preoccupied with no more than a ham sandwich and getting a game with the East Fremantle league side on Saturday. They signal the beginning of a series of events that are to shake Perth to its foundations.It is 1979, and Perth is jumping with pub bands and overnight millionaires. 'Mr Gruesome' has just taken another victim. Snowy's life and career are to be forever changed by the grim deeds of a serial killer, and the dark bloom spreading across the City of Light.
Dave Warner is an author, musician and screenwriter. He has written none novels and six non-fiction books. His first novel, City of Light, won the Western Australian Premiers Book Award for Fiction, and Before it Breaks (2015) the Ned Kelly Award for best Australian crime fiction. His novel Clear to the Horizon features the lead characters from both these books. His most recent crime novels are River of Salt and Over My Dead Body. Dave Warner first came to national prominence with his gold album Mugs Game, and his band Dave Warners from the Suburbs. In 2017 he released his tenth album, When. He has been named a Western Australian State Living Treasure and has been inducted into the WAMi RocknRoll of Renown.
"Lively, funny, with enough plot for three novels." -- Sun-Herald
"Warner consistently hits the target, skilfully creating a parallel world where crooks, their victims and pursuers breathe a different fetid air. His first novel is full of surprises and contradictions, wit and suspense, and could only have been pulled off by someone as audacious and confident as a reinvented musician who has died a million times on stage in a thousand cold rooms, using a borrowed guitar and someone elses suit." -- Graeme Blundell, Weekend Australian
"With its false leads, strange connections and quick pace, [this] is an enjoyable tale." Fremantle Herald
"One of the Australian crime novels that people should read." -- Body Dabbler
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alive with the flavours, rhythms, cadences, corporate buccaneering and political adventurism of that era
so good one wonder[s] what Warner could possibly do for an encore." -- Australian Book Review
"The plot is impressively complex, with clues scattered like land mines, and the suspense enough to keep you riveted to this thriller." -- Courier Times