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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
A tragic story about a murder during the depression that went "unsolved" for many years because the murderer was a cop. The story was good, but the ending was pretty flat, and this wasn't as good as Egan's other books.
An outstanding recommendation from a colleague on the transformative power of historical research. Eagan begins by reconstructing 1935 Spokane (and you can see his fascination building for the Dust Bowl for his next book)--an agricultural valley worried about hobos, Okies and scarcity, teeming with bootleggers and vice and aided by a police department of head-knocking goons. When a creamery (butter was .40 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 1989, Tony Bamonte, the next generation in lawmen, and the son of a raucous logger and good-time 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.
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
challenging
informative
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
This was a really interesting (and disturbing) book about the Spokane Police Dept. A true story centered on a crime in 1935. Fascinating history or the era and the area, hard to imagine how bleak things were. Also some Native American Indian history of the area. Disturbing because of the extent of the police cover-up of a crime for decades. Makes you very distrustful of the men in blue. Overall, great 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.
It reads more like a fictional story than nonfiction. It's not dry and boring. It might have some embellishment but it's amazing.
Egan does a great job setting the scene of corrupt and desperate 1930's Spokane and the plodding, paperwork bogged determination of an officer trying to get justice on a cold case. I would have chopped about fifty pages off of the end, but otherwise an informative read on local history.
dark
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
dark
informative
slow-paced
Fascinating true story, even if not written in the brilliant prose and style of Egan's later works. A sheriff in rural eastern Washington in the late 1980s decides to write the history of Spokane's police as his master's thesis, and in the process uncovers the buried story of an unsolved mystery killing from the 1930s involving the conspiracy of silence and self-protection culture of law enforcement.