Julian author examines local surf culture in latest crime novel, 'Dawn Patrol'

By BECKY FREEMAN - For the North County Times | Saturday, June 14, 2008 10:11 PM PDT ∞

"The Dawn Patrol"

Don Winslow

Knopf Publishing

$23.95

320 pages

Don Winslow had to tell himself to stop the research process. He was enjoying it too much.

Hanging out on the beach, driving up and down Pacific Coast Highway, stopping for a while in places like Pacific Beach or Encinitas. The geography and its beauty fascinated him, the ever-changing vibe of the various cities intrigued him, the people even more.

But at some point he had to tell himself to stop, to go home to Julian, to sit down and to write his fifth novel, "The Dawn Patrol" (Knopf, $23.95), which was released last week. It's a surf/detective drama set along PCH that stops on its way to solving crimes of murder and human trafficking in various locales like PB's Crystal Pier, Swami's and Oceanside.

"One of my reasons for writing the book is that it gave me a year to go around and hang out and get to the know the places," said Winslow, who grew up in a small fishing town in Rhode Island before settling down in Southern California, living for the past 20 years everywhere from Dana Point to San Diego to Julian, where he now resides.

"But the tough thing with research is that you have to cut it off at some point and write the book. Then you take an area like San Diego, with so much variety, where you can have breakfast in the mountains or the desert and dinner at the beach, and it's even tougher."

Once Winslow got down to business, a story was shaped, not only around the obvious disparities between La Jolla and Pacific Beach, but also between the people of San Diego ---- people from drug dealers to strippers to high-powered corporate lawyers and plastic surgeons, a lifeguard, a female surfer and even a Japanese strawberry farmer.

"I love the variety here," Winslow said. "San Diego County has no ethnic majority, and that's a great thing. You go out and about and you see so much, and it's great for a writer to get some of that variety, I think it's healthy."

Winslow's latest plotline begins in Pacific Beach, making stops in Ocean Beach, La Jolla, Mira Mesa and Oceanside. Winslow's narrative slows a bit to introduce each new location, giving the novel a solid foundation, built on reality. With each stop, the plot builds, like the promise of a swell in the Pacific, as well as the promise of solving a crime that is bigger than the main character ---- private investigator Boone Daniels ---- can imagine.

Winslow interposes a theme that makes the novel less about the crime action and surf jargon and more about the universal theme of our need to be caught up in something bigger than ourselves. It's about love that doesn't make sense, about crimes of humanity that don't make sense, and about an ocean that we can only try to make sense of.

"What I love about the ocean is that it's going to do what it's going to do whether you're there or not. It's something so much bigger than yourself," Winslow said.

And so, Winslow's characters get caught up in a drama that is also bigger than they are. As the swell builds in the ocean, so too do the characters' knowledge of an evil human-trafficking business being run over the border, through the pristine ocean and past the beautiful coastal cities to an underlying place of cultural darkness.

"I tried to take those disparate elements and bring them together, because life is like that, and Southern California is like that," said Winslow, who also has a background as a private investigator. "There are pretty places, but at the same time there is another strata, things that are ugly and dodgy, and they exist side by side.

"But the ocean is that way, too," Winslow continued. "One second it's placid, the next violent and life-threatening. And that's what we like about it ---- it's kinetic and moving."

Rebecca Freeman is a Southern California freelance writer.

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