The Dawn Patrol [With Earbuds]

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.

From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

Ex-cop turned PI Boone Daniels lives to surf, as do the rest of the Dawn Patrol, who gather every morning on the beach just north of San Diego, Calif.—Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, Johnny Banzai, High Tide and Sunny Day—in this terrific thriller from Winslow (The Power of the Dog). Boone works his PI job just enough to keep his near idyllic life afloat, but before Winslow's done with him and he's back on his board, he'll have weathered some heavy seas and taken some perilous falls. Dan Silver, owner of Silver Dan's strip club, may have burned down his own warehouse to collect on the insurance money. When the insurance company hires beautiful lady lawyer Petra Hall to sue Silver, she turns to Boone to do the detective work. If all this sounds mildly comic, it is, but it's also dark, violent and plenty serious as Winslow keeps raising the stakes, as well as the waves, for all involved. Author tour. (June)

Don Winslow has worked as a private investigator in London, New York City, and elsewhere in the United States, and as a consultant to law firms and insurance companies for more than fifteen years.