Frank Swann

Series · 4 books · 2010-2021

By David Whish-Wilson

Books in series

Line of Sight

2010

When a brothel madam is shot on a Perth golf course in 1975 it should be a routine murder enquiry. But it isn't. In fact there's barely an investigation at all, and Superintendent Swann thinks he knows why. Heroin is the new drug in town and the money is finding its way into some very respectable hands. It's the brave or the foolish who accuse their fellow cops of corruption, and sometimes not even Swann is sure which he is. Especially when those he's pointing the finger at have mates in every stronghold of power in the state – big business, organised crime, the government. He might have won the first round by forcing a royal commission, but the judge is an ailing patsy and the outcome seems predetermined. If that's not enough to contend with, Swann's teenage daughter has disappeared, he doesn't know whether she's alive or not, and the word on the street is he's a dead man walking. Line of Sight is classic crime noir, a tale of dark corruption set in a city of sun and heat.

Zero at the Bone

2013

Ex-detective Frank Swann is now on the outside of the police force – the only way to get justice done in Perth. In 1979 the city is a place of celebration and corruption. There are street parties, official glad-handing – even a royal visit – to commemorate a century and a half since colonisation. But behind the festivities a new kind of land grab is going on, this time for mining leases. The price of gold is up and very few, it seems, are incorruptible before its lure. When Swann is hired to probe the suicide of a respected geologist, he's drawn into a mire of vice and fraud, at the centre of which sit the directors of a gold-lease consortium. They're an unlikely collection of the seemingly respectable and the clearly not, with one thing in common: a lust for wealth that verges on a disease. For an old-school tough guy like Swann, that's a gauntlet he just has to pick up . . .

Old Scores

2016

It's the early 1980 the heady days of excess, dirty secrets and personal favours. Former detective Frank Swann is still in disgrace, working as a low-rent PI. But when he's offered a security job by the premier's fixer, it soon becomes clear that someone is bugging the premier's phone – and it may cost Swann more than his job to find out why.

Shore Leave

2021

It is Fremantle in 1989 and Frank Swann is at home, suffering from an undiagnosed and debilitating illness. When Frank is called in to investigate an incident at a local brothel, it soon appears there is a link between the death of two women and the arrival of the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the port city. Shore Leave is the fourth book in the Frank Swann series and also features Lee Southern, the main character from True West.

Author

David Whish-Wilson

Author · 7 books

David Whish-Wilson is the author of nine novels and three creative non-fiction books. He was born in Newcastle, NSW but raised in Singapore, Victoria and WA. He left Australia aged eighteen to live for a decade in Europe, Africa and Asia, where he worked as a barman, actor, streetseller, petty criminal, labourer, exterminator, factory worker, gardener, clerk, travel agent, teacher and drug trial guinea pig. David’s first novel in the Frank Swann crime series, Line of Sight (Penguin Australia) was shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Award in 2012. He has since written three more in the series – the first three being published in Germany by Suhrkamp Verlag. David wrote the Perth book in the NewSouth Books city series, which was short-listed for a WA Premiers Book Award. David's first Lee Southern crime novel True West was shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction in 2020. David also teaches in the prison system in Perth and previously in Fiji, where he started the countries first prisoner writing program. He currently lives in Fremantle, Western Australia with his partner and three kids, where he teaches creative writing at Curtin University.