If Philip Marlowe had surfed, he would have felt right at home in Don Winslow’s THE DAWN PATROL. Its modern-day dick is Boone, who catches some waves when he’s not taking cases to pay his bills. He’s an amalgam of various P.I.s throughout the literary world, with Mike Hammer coming in a distant second. But Boone’s his own man — a former cop who left the force in disgust because he wanted to play by the rules.

The reason for his departure is a sore point — a thread that weaves its way through the story, giving you a better understanding of what drives Boone in his quest to find the truth. He’s part of the Dawn Patrol, a group of men and one woman who surf every morning before they go to their jobs. He is hired by a stunning woman named Petra, who is a lawyer in a desperate bind, since her star witness — a stripper named Tammy — to an insurance fire has gone missing.

Tracking Petra down seems a lot harder then expected, especially when a woman turns up dead that has all of Tammy’s I.D. It seems someone made a mistake by throwing off the wrong girl off a balcony. This is only the crest of the wave of this case, which goes much deeper than expected, with Boone balancing his time, trying to find missing Tammy before anyone else does. That includes one of his Dawn Patrol pals: police detective Johnny Banzai.

Landlocked readers out there might seem a bit lost with all the surf talk that permeates the novel, but that is definitely part of its charm. Winslow doesn’t overdo the slang, and it’s easy enough to figure out what the crew is talking about. It’s with these passages that are set amid the Dawn Patrol members where you get the feeling these guys would die for each other.

Winslow writes this book as if he were riding the typewriter as a board through the curl of a wave. Now only if Raymond Chandler hanged 10. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE by Don Winslow