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The Dawn Patrol | 
 enlarge | Author: Don Winslow
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $9.25
You Save: $14.70 (61%)
New (34) Used (16) Collectible (6) from $8.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 16329
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307266206
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307266200
ASIN: 0307266206
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW.
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Product Description
The author of The Winter of Frankie Machine (“another instant classic”—Lee Child) is back with a razor-sharp novel as cool and unbridled as its California surfer heroes, as heart-stopping as a wave none of them sees coming.
Boone Daniels lives to surf. Every morning he’s out in the break off Pacific Beach with the other members of The Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is. Or nearly. They have “real j-o-b-s”; Boone works as a PI just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and wet suits—and in the water whenever the waves are “epic macking crunchy.”
But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted back when he was on the San Diego police force. He blames himself—just as almost everyone in the department does—for not being able to save her. Now, when he can’t say no to a gorgeous, bossy lawyer who wants his help investigating an insurance scam, he’s unexpectedly staring at a chance to make some amends—and take some revenge—for Rain’s disappearance. It might mean missing the most colossal waves he’s liable to encounter (not to mention putting The Dawn Patrol in serious harm’s way as he tangles with the local thuggery), but this investigation is about to give him a wilder ride than any he’s ever imagined.
Harrowing and funny, righteous and outrageous, The Dawn Patrol is epic macking crunchy from start to finish.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Here's a great author that I just discovered!!! September 7, 2008
Up until last week, I'd never read anything by Don Winslow, or even heard of him for that matter. Another book reviewer recommended him to me, suggesting that I start with either Winslow's newest novel, The Dawn Patrol, or his book, California Fire and Life. What I did was buy both of them, along with Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine, which is being turned into a major motion picture by Robert DeNiro. I got them last weekend and quickly read The Dawn Patrol, thinking that it was going to be hard to get into because Southern California surfing is a major part of the book, and I've never been a big fan of surfing in general. I ended up falling head over heels in love with the novel and devoured it in two days. Now, I'm in the middle of Frankie Machine, praying the DeNiro will finish the movie adaptation of it and that the film will be out within the next year or two.
The Dawn Patrol refers to Boone Daniels and the small group of people that meet him every morning to surf the waves of Pacific Beach in San Diego. It also refers to the men who pick-up little girls every morning further up the coast so that they can sexually abuse them for the day. Daniels, who is now a private investigator after having served on the San Diego Police Department for three years, gets hired for a case that has him tracking down a female witness, who saw members of the Mob burning down a warehouse. The men who instigated the arson want the woman killed and in up murdering the wrong person by mistake. Daniels therefore has to find the real witness before the killers do and this inadvertently leads him to child sex ring operation and the evil people behind it. When Daniels was a police officer, he lost his job by doing the right thing and it led to a missing child never being found again. Daniels blames himself for that and still searches for the little girl during his spare time. Because of that, he won't allow any child to be abused if it's within his power to do something about it. The people behind the sex ring are going to have their hands full when Daniels starts hunting them with extreme prejudice, sensing that this is one way he can atone for his past mistake, even if it means his own death in the process.
I can't say enough good things about Don Winslow and The Dawn Patrol. I'm totally lost as to why this author isn't hitting the New York Times Bestseller list with every new novel that comes out. The Dawn Patrol is written with clear, sharp prose that brings to life Southern California and the surfing community, the city of San Diego, and the vast array of unusual and bizarre characters that inhabit this intense journey into the darkness of man's soul. Though quite serious at times, the novel is also funny in parts with Daniel's laid-back attitude about life and his close friends...that is until he begins the hunt for retribution. This is also the type of novel that you pray will eventually have a sequel to it. I don't know what Winslow is writing right now, but I hope Boone Daniels is definitely in it. This is a character that you quickly learn to care about and to root for as he takes out the bad guys. It's also important to note that the members of the surfing Dawn Patrol are also clearly portrayed as full and interesting characters, with each one playing an important part in the story. Highly recommended to those who love the PI genre and are looking for something slightly different, but that is well written with great characters, unbelievable suspense, and an ending you'll never see coming.
 The only constant is change. August 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Boone Daniels (ex-policeman and current private investigator) is a member of The Dawn Patrol. The Dawn Patrol consists of four men and one woman: Boone, Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, Johnny Banzai, High Tide, and Sunny Day. All of them serious surfers and they're more than best friends; they are an ocean loving, fun seeking, surf family.
A few days before the biggest wave of their lives, a female lawyer comes to Boone for help. She is trying to locate a witness to a fire that she desperately needs to testify in an insurance fraud case. If Boone wasn't so broke and if Petra, the lawyer, weren't so beautiful, it would have been easy to turn the job down; the last thing Boone wants is to miss the biggest most prime wave of his life.
This was an extraordinarily fun novel, which covers a very serious issue. It takes place in San Diego; I've been there a few times, and it was fun to re-visit the area with Don Winslow's imagery. Having never experienced "catching a wave" either in reality or in a novel, this was a refreshingly different read. Whether you are from the East Coast, the West Coast, a beach bum, or a snow bunny, I think you'd enjoy, The Dawn Patrol.
 Fun, but not entirely accurate August 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This novel is a great beach read, but the author got a few things wrong, e.g., nobody in California calls Pacific Coast Highway the PCH (it's just "PCH", no "the"), and he got goofyfoot reversed (right foot forward, not left forward, is goofyfoot). Of course, the author might have fallen victim to an ignorant copyeditor who thought s/he knew better.
Not exactly riding the wave August 27, 2008
It's not that it's badly written. Far from it. But for some of us who ache for the next Don Winslow book, The Dawn Patrol has to be something of a disappointment. If it was by any other writer, it would be a much acclaimed triumph, but Winslow has set the bar very high with Power of the Dog and The Winter of Frankie Machine. With The Dawn Patrol, he hasn't raised that bar or, sadly, even cleared it. The story is a little one-dimensional, it was difficult to find much affection for the characters and maybe I just don't relate to the surfing scene.
Author Ian Rankin is right in saying Winslow is a secret you don't want to share with anyone else but this isn't one of those books that you never want to end. Ah well, only a couple of years or so to the next one.
Epic Macking Crunchy August 12, 2008
macking crunchy.
That is the term, in Surfbonics, a character in Don Winslow's The Dawn Patrol uses to describe the big wave that is approaching the beaches of San Diego. It's a once-per-twenty-years ocean eruption that makes and breaks careers and that every surfer worth his weight in sunscreen comes to So Cal to experience. And it's all Boone Daniels wants.
Except Boone, a PI who works just enough to pay some bills, has a new case. It's a case he doesn't want. He'll happily get to it after the big swell. But his client--drop-dead gorgeous Brit Petra--is having none of it. So, Boone has to stow his board and wave bye-bye to the other members of the Dawn Patrol--a group that meets every morning to surf--to go look for a lost stripper who needs to testify in an upcoming trial.
From that seemingly inauspicious beginning, Winslow throws the reader into the world of southern California. And what a tour it is. I happened upon The Dawn Patrol (TDP) because I vacationed in San Diego and wanted to read something criminal in nature and local. I decided against TDP largely because I didn't have time to buy the book. It's a good thing, too, for Winslow as Tour Guide permeates this book like the smell of sunscreen at a beach. He gives you the experience of surf culture in So Cal without having ever been there. Folks as far away as Iceland are going to want to chuck off the parkas, pick up a board, and cut through the waves. Having visited the locations of TDP in June, I thoroughly enjoyed Boone and his friends traverse the locales I did. But the beauty of TDP is that you don't have to know what the Pacific Coast Highway is to enjoy the story. It is a rush. It is like a wave, an epic macking crunchy one, powering its way into your brain.
The style of Winslow's writing propels the story forward using the present tense and short chapters. I really liked that style and found it way too easy to just read (or listen, as I did) to a few more chapters. Every now and then, Winslow stops the action to give a brief history of a portion of San Diego. Those really make the book, especially his short dissertation on what constitutes a wave. There are books where the author does his best to get out of the way and just present the story. That's the Elmore Leonard School of Writing. It works. But TDP was like Winslow himself telling you the story, sitting across from a beach bonfire from you, the waves lapping the beach a few yards away, the sun a distant memory, the stars the only other listeners. And it worked brilliantly.
The members of the Dawn Patrol--Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, Johnny Banzai, High Tide, and Sunny Day--are priceless. Each member gets his or her own bio at just the appropriate time in the book. Hang Twelve, a young surfing fanatic, has his name bestowed on him by Boone for the very reason you'd suspect. Ditto Dave the Love God, a lifeguard on Pacific Beach who, according to Johnny Banzai, has been "spread over more tourist flesh than Bain de Soleil." Banzai, a SDPD detective, is Japanese-American and if you're a Japanese-American, according to Winslow, who is "a seriously radical, nose-first, balls-out, hard-charging surfer, you're just going to get glossed either with `Kamikaze' or `Banzai,' you just are." High Tide is Samoan and I'll give you one guess as to his size and his sobriquet. Sunny Day, the lone female of the bunch, is "a force of nature--tall, long-legged--Sunny is exactly what Brian Wilson meant when he wrote that he wished they all could be California girls." With a group like this, who wouldn't want to go along for an adventure.
Except the adventure in question gets deadly, and in a hurry. And the choices certain characters make puts them at odds with other members of the Dawn Patrol. As a reader, I didn't want Character A to do something because Character B would have to fight it. But as a writer, I realized that all the actions of all the characters are precisely correct. These folks are real people who make real, yet sometimes, difficult decisions. They live with the consequences but their choice, based on their character, was perfectly aligned. That is a good lesson in storytelling.
The benefit of the quick, short chapters that Winslow uses is that the action can jump from once set of characters to another in the space of half a page. I liked it, while some other readers may prefer longer chapters. But the quick cuts eliminates the painstaking `recap' where an author has to write something like this: "Just as Bob was blasting through a door, half a city away, Jane woke with a start." It's just easier Winslow's way.
The quick cuts also allows Winslow the flexibility to juxtapose sad scenes with happy scenes, or scenes of calm with scenes of high anxiety. There is a sequence of events, late in the book, where something good and exciting is happening and something bad and exciting is simultaneously happening. I could give all sorts of excuses--it was morning, I was tired, I hadn't had a complete cup of java yet, the rising sun hit my face at just the right time--but I'll just confess to the obvious: I felt the sting of tears and goose bumps at a certain scene. Winslow had set a pace of actions and expectations that overcame me at a certain moment. The tears didn't leave my eyes but my contacts certainly felt more comfortable. I'll not say if it was tears of joy or sadness. You'll have to read to find out.
I've spoken before about audiobooks but this is one you simply must listen to. Ray Porter gives a fantastic performance. For most of the men, he adopts a surfer voice that puts you right there next to them. For Petra, the British gal, he adopts a lilting English accent. It was spectacular.
Early on the in the book, the Dawn Patrol have an ongoing List of Things That Are Good. Included are such topics as double overheads, free stuff, fish tacos, and all-female outrigger canoe teams. You have to read the entire list and scene because it's quite hilarious. In crime fiction, there is also the List of Authors That Are Good. I'm compiling my own list, two actually. There's the Classic Authors That Are Good (familiar names: Hammett, Chandler, Miller, Keene, Block) and then there's the New Authors That Are Good (new names: Lehane, Pelecanos, Faust, Swiercznski, Bruen, Guthrie). Guess what? Winslow just got himself on the list. Read The Dawn Patrol and tell me if that book isn't epic macking crunchy. (excerpted from http://scottdparker.blogspot.com)
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