Summer of Blood - Podcast with Dave Warner

We all know Dave Warner’s from the Suburbs. But he’s also an author and screenwriter as well as a musician.

Dave Warner outside 10 Phillimore Street, West End, Fremantle, 2024. Credit Fremantle Shipping News

Dave has written nine novels and six non-fiction books. His first novel, City of Light, won the Western Australian Premier’s 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 Mug’s Game, and his band Dave Warner’s 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 Rock’n’Roll of Renown.

Dave’s latest crime thriller, Summer of Blood, was recently published by Fremantle Press.

It’s set in San Fran and LA during the 1967 Summer of Love. For starters think Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. Not to forget Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention!

Two Australian police officers travel to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the summer of ‘67 in search of a missing young man, only to find themselves fully immersed in the world of music, free love, drugs and hippie counterculture. They soon realise this isn’t just any ordinary missing person investigation. A big gig is the perfect place to get away with murder, and their search becomes a thrilling journey through the seamy side of the 1960s counterculture.

This book is not to be missed for fans of gripping crime fiction and rock’n’roll. Each chapter heading is a song you’ll know, and if you don’t, you will soon be playing the Spotify soundtrack that follows the book!

Of Summer of Blood, Books+Publishing said – ‘The technicolour evocation of a revolution in music is vividly realised, and Warner’s passion for the artists energises the novel … perfect for readers wanting to vicariously “turn on, tune in, drop out”’.

Canberra Weekly wrote – ‘Told in a stripped down, staccato style, Summer of Blood is a twisty tale full of vivid imagery, violence, moral ambiguity and some astute reflections on the 1960s.’

Both are spot on.

Our Editor, Michael Barker, was very pleased to catch up with Dave Warner in his old stamping ground in the West End of Fremantle to record this podcast where the topics of discussion are Fremantle, music, 1967, writing, oh, and of course, Summer of Blood!

Btw, if you missed our 2019 review of Dave’s thriller, River of Salt and our podcast with Dave then, you’ll find them right here.

By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News

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