BY BRUCE DeSILVA, Associated Press Writer
The friends always gather at dawn to ride the waves near San Diego's Crystal Pier: Boon Daniels, Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, High Tide, Johnny Banzai and Sunny Day.
Work? That's something you have to do to make a few bucks for grub and board wax. So Dave's a lifeguard, Sunny's a waitress, Johnny's a cop, and Boone does a little private investigating.
But they don't take their jobs as seriously as, say, their daily debate over The List of Things That Are Good.
"I propose moving fish tacos over all-female outrigger canoe teams," Boone says one morning, precipitating a vigorous debate.
So Boone is only mildly interested when Petra Hall, a lawyer for a fire insurance company, shows up seeking his help.
It seems that Dan Silver, the owner of a strip club called Silver Dan's, has torched one of his buildings and is trying to collect on the policy. A stripper named Tammy Roddick witnessed the arson, which would make this a slam dunk case except for one thing. Nobody's been able to find her since someone hired to keep her from testifying threw her best friend off a balcony in a case of mistaken identity.
Reluctantly, Boone agrees to take the case as long as it doesn't interfere with priority 1: surfing the once-in-a-lifetime tidal surge that is expected to hit the coast in a couple of days.
These are good times for Winslow, a New York-born, Rhode Island-raised, California transplant who has written 10 previous crime novels including the excellent "California Fire and Life." Laurence Fishburne starred in a 2007 movie based on one of them, "The Death and Life of Bobby Z." And now, Michael Mann is directing and Robert De Niro is starring in an adaptation of Winslow's "The Winter of Frankie Machine," which is scheduled for release next year.
In "Dawn Patrol," Winslow keeps the mood light at first. The interplay between the quirky surfer buddies is laugh-out-loud funny. The bad guys seem buffoonish. And the relaxed pace allows plenty of time for quirky digressions about surfing culture and the history of the Southern California coast.
But gradually, the pace quickens, the stakes grow higher, and the bad guys reveal themselves as truly evil. Boone and his surfer buddies have to grow up in a hurry as the last third of this well-crafted book unfolds at breakneck speed.
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