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Breaking Blue
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Plot Summary of Breaking Blue
"Anthony Bamonte, 47, is sheriff of Pend Oreille County in the late 1980s. Working on a master's degree, he decides to write a history of the sheriffs that preceded him. The project leads him to an unsolved murder case that's 54 years old: the fatal shooting of a marshal in the tiny border town of Metaline Falls in 1935. The victim, a former policeman doing security work for a creamery just weeks short of his retirement, was killed during an armed robbery for butter.

As Bamonte explores the case, he discovers a massive coverup involving the Spokane Police department, centered around a detective who apparently took bribes, was involved in a theft ring, and may have shot more than one suspect with impunity. The beleaguered sheriff presses forward with the case that almost no one wants him to solve, trying to break through the "wall of blue" that protects law enforcement officers from colleagues who don't want to "snitch" on one another. This is a sobering but thrilling true story of the breaking of the nation's oldest continuing murder investigation."

David Loftus, Resident Scholar

Review Analysis of Breaking Blue
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
job/profession: - lawmen
Job/profession/poverty story Yes
Period of greatest activity? - 1950+

Subject of Biography
Gender - Male
Profession/status: - police/lawman
Age: - 40's-50's
Ethnicity - White
Nationality - American (!)
How sensitive is this person? - middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Average intelligence
Physique - average physique

Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings? - 4 (a fair amount)
United States Yes
The US: - Pacific NW
Small town? Yes

Style
Person - mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death? - moderately detailed references to deaths
Book makes you feel? - concerned
Commentary on society? Yes
Commentary on - decency - justice system - wicked men
Writer's slant towards subject: - neutral
Pictures/Illustrations? - None
How much dialogue in bio? - significantly more descript than dialog
Most similar books to Breaking Blue
Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
Special Agent: My Life On The Front Lines As A Woman In The FBI by Candice DeLong
Mindhunter by John Douglas
Lost Son: A Life In Pursuit Of Justice by Bernard B. Kerik
Death's Acre by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson


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Timothy Egan Resident Scholar Profiles

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David Loftus  

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