Perth-born DAVE WARNER rose to fame with his punk rock band Dave Warner and the Suburbs, mostly known for their 1976 single ‘Suburban Boy’. Since then, he’s written and starred in a musical about Elvis Presley, created a teen slasher film that starred Molly Ringwald and Kylie Minogue, released 11 albums, the latest of which is called When and has garnered critical acclaim as a crime novelist.
Here he writes about the return of character Snowy Lane in his book, Clear to the Horizon, and reveals how a spate of real-life murders in Perth resulted in him being nominated as a suspected serial killer.
Around 1990, I found the road I’d been travelling on had turned into a cul-de-sac. I’d been a songwriter and musician all my adult life, but if I’d ever been hip, I certainly no longer was. I had no recording contract, and my inclination to write and perform had waned: What’s the point if no radio station is going to play you? I’d written some musicals and murder weekends in the recent past, and these had worked well giving me confidence I could write drama, but what I really wanted was to write a novel. For me, a crime novel was logical. I liked crime fiction, understood plot mechanics and had found that there are some powerful connections between rock music and crime fiction. Both gave me the same primal buzz. So I was going to write a crime novel, but about what? And in what style?
Given the most successful music I’d created was about my suburban life in Perth, I decided to set something in 1979, an era I knew well, when Perth was jumping with pub bands and overnight millionaires. For style, I went first-person Chandler. I’d been to LA a couple of times and reckoned Perth wasn’t that dissimilar – hot and flat, the automobile king. I wound up creating a detective lead, Snowy Lane. At the beginning of the book he’s a well-meaning young cop and fringe footy player. By the end, which concludes a decade on from 1979, he’s been corrupted and redeemed and works as a private detective in which capacity he finally solves the serial killing case that opened the book.
The journey of Snowy’s character mirrors that of the city. These were the days of WA Inc., with political corruption at the highest level. Inspired by James Ellroy, I used a number of Western Australia’s most iconic crime cases as prototypes for my fictional events and wove a single narrative around them. This gave the novel City of Light a kind of third dimension, particularly for West Australian readers. It sold well and shared the WA Premier’s Award for fiction in 1996.
Readers kept asking me when Snowy was going to reappear, but there was a big impediment. In January of 1996, just months after City of Light was published, the Claremont serial killer struck for the first time. The killings were geographically close to where my fictional abductions occured, the victims were of the same demographic. Spookily, the first head of the Claremont Serial Killer Task Force was named Detective Richard Lane. Snowy’s first name is, you guessed it, Richard. That wasn’t the only reason I left Snowy on ice, but it was a big one.
Other books with other protagonists followed, but around 2003 I had an idea to set a crime novel in the unique world of the Kimberley, with roots of the crime that would take readers to its polar opposite location, Germany. For a decade the idea sat there barely sketched out, but finally I got down to some serious plotting, thinking it could be an opportunity for Snowy to return. Not long into plotting, however, I realised that the connection to Germany required a police protagonist. Also, the tone of the book, a seemingly minor crime in a small community, sat at odds with Snowy’s legacy of a crime that could act as a metaphor for the morality of a whole state.
Snowy equalled big, this demanded small. As a result I created a new detective, Inspector Daniel Clement, who has returned to little old Broome after being a high profile Perth homicide cop. The book he features in, 2015’s Before It Breaks, has been a success I think, winning a Ned Kelly and some readers along the way.
While pondering my next novel, I was roused one morning by a knock at my door in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Two suited men introduced themselves as cold-case detective working on the Claremont serial killer case. They told me I’d been nominated as a suspect by a number
of people and asked would I mind speaking
to them.
I invited them in, they asked their questions, and I gave them a DNA sample. Talking with the detectives, I began to comprehend this case was now nearly 20 years old. My eldest daughter, born around City of Light’s publication, was now at university. I couldn’t help but think about the families of the victims and their long and awful wait, about the police who had tried to solve the crime and failed, and those who had been tainted with the suspicion of being involved. It seemed fate was directing me to use this canvas, but still, I resisted. Even after 20 years, the wound was still too raw.
But I couldn’t ignore the profound ongoing effect of the murders on Perth’s psyche, nor that I’d been nominated as a serial killer. Finally, I had the basis of something that would justify the return of Snowy Lane. What excited me was the length of time Snowy had been off the scene. We’d last heard from him in 1989. Could I use Snowy to voice the frustrations and fears of all those faced with life’s inexorable advance and their own failings over that time?
Technically I wanted to push myself even further. I wanted to create a story that tapped into the psychological trauma of a whole state and I wanted to use both Snowy and Dan Clement to do it. Dan was my age when I wrote City of Light, Snowy my age now. I saw potential.
And so here you have Clear to the Horizon, spanning 1999 to now, set in Perth and the Kimberley, using the emotional power of the Claremont serial killings as a touchstone. This is not a fictionalisation of real events; I’ve simply worked at transferring the emotional impact I felt about the real crimes to my fictional world. The real events give me a template only. At the time I began the novel in August 2015, there had been no progress on the case. By early 2016, I had written the first third of the novel and decided that Snowy’s instinct should be to pursue his hunch that an earlier abduction and rape were carried out by the serial killer. Within a few weeks of me reaching this point in my story, a Perth journalist who had followed the case closely, revealed police had matched DNA from an earlier rape to DNA found on one of the victims … Spooky.
(P.S. Within six months of me finishing the book a suspect was arrested in the real case.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Warner photographed in Customs House bar at Circular Quay, NSW, on 20 February 2017 by Bleddyn Butcher
Author of 12 novels, including the winner of the 1996 West Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction CITY OF LIGHT, and the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction ‘BEFORE IT BREAKS’, and six other non-fiction titles, Dave Warner originally gained national recognition as a musician-songwriter. His albums include the gold album MUG’S GAME and in 1992 he was the inaugural inductee into the West Australian Rock’n’Roll of Renown.
Dave has written for feature film, stage, television, radio and newspapers. His first feature movie CUT (2000) starring Kylie Minogue and Molly Ringwald was sold worldwide. GARAGE DAYS, a co-write with director Alex Proyas (The Crow / Dark City) screened at the Sundance 2003 Film Festival. RESTRAINT (Stephen Moyer, Therese Palmer, Travis Fimmel) a dark thriller followed.
Dave’s television credits include the INXS telemovie plus regular episodes of mainstream Australian primetime dramas WILD BOYS, PACKED TO THE RAFTERS, RESCUE SPECIAL OPS, MCLEOD’S DAUGHTERS, SEA PATROL. Dave was also part of the original writing team on the ground-breaking low-budget series GOING HOME (McElroy Television/SBS).
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