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In the dead days of August when there is no surf, Boone Daniels, surfer and PI, takes on a couple of cases which he doesn't want. Dan Nichols wants Boone to find out if his wife is having an affair; Boone hates matrimonial work but has no excuse to avoid taking the case. Even worse, Petra Hall, a British lawyer with whom Boone thinks he would like to develop a relationship, wants him to help her investigate the murder of Kelly Kuhio. Kelly was a surfing legend and a mentor to Boone and the other members of The Dawn Patrol, Boone's surfing gang. Petra believes that the case against the young man accused of the murder, Corey Blasingame, is shaky but Boone knows that if he helps her he will alienate his closest friends, not to mention the entire San Diego surfing community. Navigating his way through these waters is going to be a very difficult ride. Winslow and THE GENTLEMEN'S HOUR have an awful lot going for them. The marriage of surferdom with the traditional noir PI is an audacious gamble and innovation which shouldn't work but most unquestionably does. It gives a jolt of energy and invention to a format which is all too often cliched and tired. In this particular book the plotting is very good indeed (again along classic noir PI lines but none the worse for that). Winslow is an excellent prose stylist. The descriptive writing in terms of both the surfing community and San Diego is first class. The characterisation is interesting enough. The action flows easily and the book is well paced. The politics are good and the conclusion is actually very moving. All in all plus upon plus upon plus. But. Did you sense a but coming? For all this excellence I have to admit that I didn't really, until the last couple of chapters anyway, engage with the book. It didn't draw me in in the way that those books to which I award the highest accolade do. Now this may be a purely subjective reaction in part to do with the pure distance between a landlocked grey British city and the sunny ocean setting of the book. But trying to find a more objective reason I can identify a problem with Boone Daniels, a problem which is in part a recurrent one in some varieties of PI fiction. While THE GENTLEMEN'S HOUR is third not first-person and Winslow does occasionally use different perspectives - which are very effective in propelling the narrative although I am unconvinced by the female voices - it still depends heavily on Boone's attraction or otherwise in involving the reader. Now I wouldn't say he is dislikeable ; clearly he is a moral character of considerable interest. However to really buy into him you have to accept both the whole noir PI ethos and the surfer shtick. Winslow is not in the least naive about this and one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the clash between the individualism of the former and the community spirit of the latter. But even so if you don't buy into one or either of these identities then I think there are going to be some problems with the complete involvement with Boone which would really make this book compulsive. This has been a poor review as I have spent more time attempting to explain why the book didn't wholly work for me rather than stressing its many excellencies. Let me reiterate that THE GENTLEMEN'S HOUR is a very well-written, very well-plotted mystery which brings invention and originality to an old sub-genre; its objective qualities are many and substantial. Everyone ought to try a Winslow book ; it may well be that my 'but' is a purely personal one and others will be able to appreciate it as entirely the first-rate mystery it undoubtedly is.
Reviewed by Nick Hay, March 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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