The lawyer girlfriend who has involved Boone in the case says that he sees “surfing as some sort of pristine moral universe,” though those waters get awfully murky, as the plot comes to envelop white supremacists, land-shark real-estate developers, crooked geologists, ultimate-fighting thugs and the inevitable Mexican drug cartel. The senseless murder of an international surfing guru by a drunken punk threatens the bond of Boone and his fellow Dawn Patrollers, and Johnny in particular, once the private investigator comes to suspect that police coerced a false confession from their reviled suspect, and that eyewitness testimony is shaky as well. His former police colleague Johnny Banzai remains one of his best friends, and the two are charter members of “the Dawn Patrol,” the surfing elite who hit the waves early, before “the gentlemen’s hour” brings an older generation of surfing veterans to the beach. Protagonist Boone Daniels lives to surf and works when he has to, as a private investigator, after leaving the San Diego police force because of a moral quandary.

This sequel to The Dawn Patrol (2008) receives belated American publication a couple of years after it was issued in Britain, with both its colorful characters and narrative propulsion suggesting that there’s a series in the works. Those who discovered Winslow with his breakthrough Savages (2010) have some catching up to do. (Aug.The Southern California kingpin of the surf-and-drugs thriller should extend his popular domain with this novel. Winslow ensures there's nothing 'gentlemanly' about the action. The title refers to the 'second shift on the daily surfing clock' after the dawn patrol. Dumped headfirst into a dark ocean of 'localism,' Boone must also contend with surfers trying to keep their beaches for themselves and threats from the Mexican cartels. Corey is accused of the beating death of surfing legend Kelly Kuhio, 'Uncle K' to Boone, who worshipped him as a kid. Worse, Boone's new slow-burning flame, lawyer Petra Hall, wants him for the defense of 19-year-old Corey Blasingame, tied in with the Rockpile Crew, a surfing gang with a neo-Nazi skinhead agenda, from up the coast. First, fellow board rider Dan Nichols suspects his wife, 'an eleven on a California scale of ten,' is cheating on him and wants Boone to spy on her. Surfer dude PI Boone Daniels reluctantly takes on two cases.

The laidback calm of the Southern California surfing community of Pacific Beach boils over violently in Winslow's fast-paced sequel to The Dawn Patrol (2008).

The gentlemen's hour don winslow