Don Winslow

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. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl

The Dawn Patrol

Andrea Badgley

Published in 2008 and set in modern day Pacific Beach, California, The Dawn Patrol was everything I wanted from a California read: waves, water, hilarious surf lingo, characters with names like High Tide and Cheerful, a murder, page-turning suspense, a fast pace, and the best scenery I could have asked for. For the first time so far on my Andrea Reads America journey, I didn’t want to just read about a place, I wanted to be there.

 There are days when that drive along the 101 is so beautiful, it will break your f***ing heart. When you look out the window and the sun is painting masterpieces on the water…

The Dawn Patrol are a group of six surfers who are a cop, a lifeguard Love God, a giant Samoan who works for Sand Diego’s public works department, a kid named Hang Twelve, a soon-to-be pro-surfer “California girl,” and Boone Daniels, a private investigator and the hero of our story. The Dawn Patrol gathers on the waves every morning to surf before they start their jobs in the real world. They are as tight as family, and all play roles in this well-told, perfectly paced mystery that goes deeper than the original crime of a stripper’s murder. As is always the case in a decent mystery series, our P.I. Boone Daniels has depth and is haunted by past mistakes: the child molestor that got away.

The Dawn Patrol, in addition to plopping me beachside among surfers in sunny California, also gave me a great story with characters I came to love. So far there is only one more book in the Boone Daniels series. I hope Winslow plans to write more.

The Dawn Patrol

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