liked the history, I disliked the personal story of Tony Bamonte,
Spokane was a cesspit of killing, robbery, and corruption from the time white men first arrived in the neighborhood, about, Now I don't know exactly what was going on when only the Indians lived there, but they did manage to live there for thousands of years without destroying the land.
When white men arrived, well never mind reasonable behavior, Logging, killing Indians including those trying to surrender, killinghorses belonging to the Indians, mining, bootlegging, whoring, wife beating, and a totally corrupt police force.
Insomeone is robbing creameries for butter and cream to sell on the black market, Remember this is depression and dust bowl era, lots of very hungry people and people out of work, A marshal working security in the town where one of the creameries is located is shot dead by the thieves, But who were the thieves, who was the murderer Police don't tell on police so the murderer is not caught,
In rides Sheriff Tony Bamonte, in, figuratively wearing a white hat, Mr. good guy. He fights for right He fights the logging corporations, the justice department, the forest service, Kind of this lone cowboy sheriff, He decides to solve this crime, No one likes him for it except the family of the marshal who diedyears ago in the robbery,
Tony Bamonte is also kind of a messed up person in his own esteem, which he keeps telling us about, his father was cold, his mother was a slut.
He doesn't forgive his mother or stop trying to find some trace of love in the years his father had lived, Sadly, despite his heroic work in solving this crime, he seems incapable of not repeating his parents mistakes with his own family.
It was the time of the Great Depression and soon after Prohibition's end, when lawkeeping was on shaky ground, when the line between cop and robber blurred and, for some, disappeared completelya time when a good man might be killed over scarce and valuable.
. . butter
Employing some novelistic techniques, Egan recounts theSpokane creamery robberies and the murder of Town Marshall George Conff, then follows the story to its fascinating resolution inwhen a number of the suspects and witnesses are still alive and still sitting tight on their secrets.
Breaking Blue is Egan's first book, and maybeof the book is marred by heavyhanded dramatizing, This, however, doesn't prevent me from giving the book a strong recommendation, Enjoyed this book immensely. Totally different from The Worst Hard Times, but yet set in a similar time period, The setting was great the research was very good and it gave a very compelling story, One of the best nonfiction books I've read,
It reads more like a fictional story than nonfiction, It's not dry and boring, It might have some embellishment but it's amazing, Remember, the police are your friends NOT! At least not in's Spokane or even until the's according to this book.
This book is the true story of a murder committed inin the small NE Washington town of Newport by an offduty Spokane police detective and accomplices during a burglary of the local creamery.
The town night marshall happens upon the burglary, of butter no less, and is shot dead, The Spokane police, most of whom are corrupt and on the take, closes ranks around one of their own and the murder investigation stalls for lack of evidence and effort.
Fast forward nearly fifty years to when Anthony Bamonte, theyear old
sheriff of Pend Oreille County, begins a graduate program at Gonzaga University and chooses to focus on the history of major crimes in his jurisdiction as his thesis project.
He becomes obsessed with finding out who committed what was at the time the longest unsolved murder case in the country,
Bamonte is an interesting character himself and his life has not been easy, It is amazing that he was able to stick with the investigation in spite of the many distractions that would have stopped most people in their tracks.
Eventually, through sheer persistence and a bit of luck he is able to break through the "blue wall" and years of coverup to finally finger the "perp" and make him squirm a bit before his passing.
There is a a great deal of interesting history in this book about Depressionera Spokane and the surrounding Northwest, I'm giving this bookstars, but it's really closer to,. This is an early book of Egan's, and as some other reviewers have already mentioned, it doesn't have the polish that his later books have, as his writing skills evolved.
The story definitely held my interest, but I felt like it meandered a little too much,
Egan does a great job of revealing the culture of law enforcement, The reader will notice the improvements in the's compared to the's when many cops were criminals themselves, but the's pales in comparison with the professionalism and decency expected of law enforcement today.
Knowing and understanding this culture helps explain some of the issues we still see in the news today, but also shows that improvements are slowly being made.
One thing I noticed was that there was no index and no list of sources, Sources were mentioned throughout the book, in terms of who Bamonte spoke to and the archives he accessed, but I was surprised that Egan didn't include a list of exactly where he got all of his research from.
The lack of an index meant that when I wanted to find something from earlier in the book for example, to cross reference what a suspect said in an interview with what he had done back inI had to flip back through pages in the book and wasn't always successful.
I'm not sure if the lack of citations and an index is indicative of the year this book was writtenor something else.
Overall, though, if you like true crime mixed with history, have any interest in the Spokane area of Washington, or enjoy Egan's books, you should give this one a try.
I'm glad I read it, This was not at all a book I was planning to read, It was a filler read one that came up on SCRIBD and I thought looked interesting enough to give a shot, Obviously I enjoyed the book quite a bit, I read some of the lower ratings, as I usually do if I give a book five, and I can understand where they're coming at on this one.
I think this book just hit the spot for me due to what I've been researching lately propaganda,
There were a lot of overlapping themes of interest in here for me, The author delved a little into the injustices against the Native Americans, racism, police brutality, police corruption, and conspiracy/coverups, The more I learn about policing, the less respect I have for it overall, I have two good friends who are cops and I respect them a great deal, but I've learned enough to know that corruption runs deep, even if a few escape it see the book "I Got a Monster" for another good story.
It's just mindblowing how many people are willing to cover up the evil of certain people, And then the gall of the murderer to pray to God to stop the "witch hunt, " The depths of depravity knows no bounds,
This is a fascinating book that really uncovers how common conspiracies are and how they aren't just big institutional things.
I could not put this book down, I read this during a visit to Flathead County, Montana after spending the night in a hotel in downtown Spkane, This engrossing true story is about the history of the depression, this part of the Northwest, law enforcement and the travails of fascinating individuals.
There is no "happy ending" with some true stories but there is a meaningful and rich discussion of the twists and turns of the human condition.
Duty, sacrifice, hard work love, marriage and abject psychcopothy are well developed and examined themes, Generally, I love Timothy Egan, He's a great writer and he picks some fascinating topics, I was supereager to read this boo, not only because of the author, but because i have inlaw connections in Spokane,
I would give the firstpages of this book two and four to the last twothirds of the book.
The first several pages were boring and very slow going because the reader does not have a clue what the significance of these events will be.
So I averaged it out to three, which is generous for the firstpages, and really doesn't do justice to the rest of the book, which was better than three.
The pace picks up considerably after about page, when we get to know Tony Bamonte, who is doing the research.
What a fascinating character!
I think Mr, Egan should have flippedflopped the order, or interspersed the research findings with the events, I don't think putting the historical events first, without much context, was the best way to go about this subject matter, I almost felt manipulated into the reading the firstpages again after I came to the end for that context, but life is too short when you're my age to read a book a second time for that reason.
I'm also kind of pissed that he mentions that this whole story was part of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, then he doesn't tell us what episode, what season, what day it aired, nothing.
I have spent A LOT of time looking for it on IMDB and can't find it,
Help, out there, if anyone has found it! An early Egan, but still excellent, I love the way he weaves together time, place, and people to tell a great story, Egan's writing is excellent he draws into the web of his story, hard to put down, but it's a frustrating read because of the arrogance of power that it reveals.
The powerful in this story ignore ethics and morality to keep their power, The reality Egan reveals reminds me why I'm a Libertarian, An outstanding recommendation from a colleague on the transformative power of historical research, Eagan begins by reconstructingSpokane and you can see his fascination building for the Dust Bowl for his next bookan agricultural valley worried about hobos, Okies and scarcity, teeming with bootleggers and vice and aided by a police department of headknocking goons.
When a creamery butter was,a pound robbery ended in the death of a county sheriff, it was an open secret that a Spokane police officer had been involved, but the city closed ranks.
In, Tony Bamonte, the next generation in lawmen, and the son of a raucous logger and goodtime girl, set out to write a history of his county's sheriffs as his master's thesis in Organizational Leadership, uncapping the bottle of worms and encountering both tantalizing clues and apathetic denials.
I am well aware of the bullies and assholes who aspire to leadership in dying mining and lumber towns, so Eagan's account runs absolutely true about the tragically corrosive results of placing loyalty to men on the wrong side of history over loyalty to the law and the service to the community.
I'm a westerner throughandthrough. If I haven't punched cows through the region Timothy Egan has written about , I've backpacked, hunted, or fished it, It's God's country. I now live in a region called The Palouse which is discussed, It lies seventy miles south of the turret of Breaking Blue, Spokane,
Of his books, the three that I've read, the style of Breaking Blue may be my favorite, although born a child of the Dust Bowl, I preferred the subject of The Worst Hard Time.
As you read Breaking Blue you come to understand the parasitic nature of the turbulence, upheaval and corruption integral to law enforcement in eastern Washington, North Idaho and parts of Montana.
These were not so much intentional acts of those involved as it was the inherent nature of the kind of individuals seeking refuge in this the last bastion of the Wild West during thes.
These raw knuckled hardnosed characters were further provoked by the governments suggestion that fortune could be found in these areas bringing ill conditioned opportunists to an under developed area dispirited by the Great Depression.
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