The Dawn Patrol was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2008. Boone Daniels surfs every morning at Pacific Beach with the Dawn Patrol — a loose crew of regulars who share the pre-dawn waves and a fierce loyalty to each other. When he’s not surfing, Boone works as a private investigator, taking cases that are usually boring enough to leave his afternoons free for more surfing.
A routine insurance fraud case — a fire at a beachfront strip club — leads Boone to a young woman named Tammy Roddick, who turns out to be a material witness in a human trafficking operation running undocumented workers from Baja across the border. The case puts Boone in conflict with a powerful local developer, with the Mexican cartels, and with his own desire to avoid anything that might disrupt his carefully maintained surf-centered existence.
Winslow writes San Diego with the authority of a longtime resident: the beach culture, the taco shops, the class divisions between the coastal neighborhoods and the inland communities, the proximity of Mexico and the constant traffic — legal and illegal — across the border. The Dawn Patrol itself is Winslow’s most appealing creation: a community defined by a shared ritual (the morning surf) that sustains its members through the chaos of their individual lives.
Collecting The Dawn Patrol
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2008): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$40
- Very good/very good: $5–$15