The Dawn Patrol

by: Don Winslow

Published by: Vintage Books: Vintage Crime, Black Lizard

Reviewer: C. L. Rossman

Describing this book as a “detective mystery” is like trying to cram down War and Peace as a description of “some Russians.” The Dawn Patrol is so much more than that. It is the vision of a golden Paradise on the shores of the Pacific, a breezy swing into the language and lifestyle of another culture—surfers and ”˜surfbonics’; and the crashing of a great wave of events which sweeps your former life away and leaves you on the sands of an unknown future.

The heroes are Boone Daniels and his cadre of surfing buddies—people who have been renamed in their sport, like Hang Twelve and Dave the Love God, Johnny Banzai and Sunny Day. Boone lives for the waves, making only enough money as a private detective to continue his passion and not quite pay his bills. He and his gang are awaiting an epic set of waves due to land on their South California beach—until Boone’s life and dreams are interrupted by a snippy Brit of a lawyer whose search for the killers of a stripper will turn his world upside down and reveal the scum crawling underneath the local rocks.

The case turns very serious indeed and while Boones tries to close it before the next set of “epic-macking crunchies” arrives, his soul becomes entangled when the case reminds him of a little girl he could not save during his past career as a police detective and threatens to pull the entire Dawn Patrol apart with its revelations of human trafficking.

Winslow writes in kind of a lyric style that makes us long for the Golden Age of California surfing, a world of innocence long passed from these shores. And he handles a twisting plot very well too, bringing everything together in a very last-moment crisis and resolution.

Winslow is also the author of The Winter of Frankie Machine and The Death and Life of Bobby Zee; but in TheDawn Patrol he brings together his passion (the eternal wave) and his practice (as a private investigator), making the book a memorable read.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a 5-star knockout, a story of humor, danger, life, love and loss as brilliant as the blue ocean it describes.

Author’s Web site: http://www.DonWinslow.com