WL Rating
What do you get when you mix a pinch of Raymond Chandler in with a dash of Kem Nunn? You get The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow, a surf novel meets detective thriller genre of book. Winslow’s Marlowe, Boone Daniels, is a former cop turned private detective with a haunted past. Sounds cliché? Well it is. In fact, everything from the themes to the surfer terms and stereotypes are massively cliché. And while the book doesn’t live up to the standards set by either Chandler or Nunn, you can’t let that get in the way of a pretty fun story. Set in San Diego, the novel’s basic premise is simple. A stripper takes a dive off an apartment balcony, tipping the first domino in a series of revelations about a mysterious case of arson. Boone Daniels, with the inconsistent support of his cadre of surfer buddies, aka the Dawn Patrol, works to figure out the mystery before the swell of the decade arrives. As you start the book you can’t help thinking that you’ve begun a tedious journey down the well worn genre of detective novels. Fortunately, as the book progresses the story becomes a tad more interesting, while your tolerance for the book’s painfully bad “surfer speak” simultaneously increases. In the end, Winslow neatly wraps up both the story and the swell. While I don’t think this book will do anything to change stereotypical views of surfers as odd-talking slackers, it is an entertaining book for your very light summer reading. (July 2010)
