SURF'S UP ~ DAWN PATROL!DON WINSLOW
Quite often I wind up late to major fiction fêtes. Usually, it’s because I’m off in some obscure fiction niche having a party virtually all by myself. Other times,it’s because I know what strikes the mainstream as great commercial fiction most often leaves me wondering what all the noise is about (The Da Vinci Code would be a prime example).
Author Don Winslow, however, started out his fiction career in one of those smaller fiction niches, so the buzz for several of his titles made them sound intriguing. However, when I tried them out, they didn’t quite grab me. I set them aside half finished and moved on.
So, when Winslow’s novel Dawn Patrol began gathering major momentum, rave reviews from around the mystery field, and began to get notice from the mainstream fiction fawners, I yawned and ignored it.
Finally, however, I had to give in. It just sounded so much like something right up my fictional alley. And having just finished reading it, I’m sitting here with my socks knocked off. Dawn Patrol was a heck of a read, an almost perfect character piece, and the best blending of surfing and mystery I’ve ever come across.
It’s as if Winslow was channeling John D. MacDonald at the height of his Travis McGee success. I can’t recommend this book enough. I am late coming to the party, but I’ve now got a non-alcoholic drink in my hand, lampshade on my head, and am leading the conga line.
I can’t wait for the sequel to The Dawn Patrol, The Gentlemen’s Hour, to be published in the USA in 2011, so I’ve ordered up the already available UK version. I ready to catch another Winslow wave.
DAWN PATROL
San Diego PI Boone Daniels would rather surf than work. While he and his fellow bronzed boarders (known collectively as the Dawn Patrol, for the time of day they hit the waves) may have real jobs, their true MO is to revel in the sun, fun, and shapely babes that populate the coastal town of Pacific Beach.
But Boone, alas, is low on cash. So when a beautiful lawyer approaches him about a missing stripper scheduled to testify in an insurance case, he takes the assignment, knowing full well that the swells expected to hit Southern California in the next couple of days will be, well, epic.
Soon, the stripper’s best friend is found dead, an apparent suicide, at a seedy motel. Boone knows it can’t be coincidence. A trail of clues leads him into the company of some shady souls, from pedophiles and plastic surgeons to thick-necked Samoan thugs. As Boone gets deeper into the investigation, he wonders whether he can dig himself out in time for high tide.
In his latest thriller (after The Winter of Frankie Machine, in 2006), critically acclaimed novelist Winslow writes with panache about the light and dark sides of San Diego and the wave-craving characters that call its celebrated coastline home.
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